St. Andrews University

Going to Edinburgh was not my first visit to Scotland. I had already been for a day a night and a day to St. Andrews to talk to the university students.

I arrived at a place called Leuchars. Standing on the station platform I found myself in a typically Hitchcockian setting. All around me the land was as flat as Texas and no matter where I looked I saw no sign of human life. If the sinister crop-sprayer flies overhead, I thought, I shall have no sugar canes among which to hide. Fortunately some students came to meet me with a car. Immediately I found them more relaxed than their equivalents in England. The reason for this had already been explained to me by Mr. Coren who then ruled the university but who now rules Punch. 'The young of St. Andrews never march,' he told me. 'There are only two streets to march along and they never carry banners because the wind is too strong.'

In fact the inhabitants not only of St. Andrews but of everywhere I have been in Scotland are communicative, laughter-loving and indulgent with foreigners to the verge of folly.

Arriving back in London I reckoned that I had traveled for over eighteen hours in order to speak for two but it had been worth it.