My studies in sociology began in 1968 at Kingston College of Technology (now Kingston University), from where I graduated in 1971. This was a heady time to enter the social sciences, which were undergoing a major transformation the consequences of which we are still working through. There had been a huge expansion of student intake to sociology, which was beginning to slow down by the early 1970s. New theoretical approaches from the US and, especially, from France and Germany were making themselves felt within a sociological tradition that still owed a great deal to Parsonian structural functionalism. Newly recruited lecturers and their students were embracing these new and radical theoretical perspectives and were increasingly stressing the links between theoretical critique and practical action. It was an exciting time to begin an academic career.

Discussions of education and achievement often stress the importance of hard work, rational choice, and careful planning. Studies in the sociology of education have shown the far greater importance of social background and conditions, of opportunity, and of educational practices. This was certainly true in my case. I did not come from an academic background but had supportive, and relatively well-off, parents. My entry into an academic career, however, was also a matter of drift in which I rather blindly took advantage of the opportunities available to me. I had never been especially academic at school and never had any idea of what I wanted to do in life. My first steps towards academic study arose simply from my interests in the various subjects available to me at school.

My favourite school subject had always been geography. Its focus on the real world and its contemporary condition appealed to me more than the abstractions of science or the literary texts studied in English, and so I applied to study geography at university. Fate intervened and I performed badly at A-level. I got a tolerable pass in geography, failed French and scraped a pass in mathematics. The pass in mathematics remains a matter of surprise to me. The course was divided into two papers. One was in ‘pure mathematics’ (in which I achieved a princely 18 per cent in the mocks) and the other was in ‘statistics’ (in which I got 92 per cent). Averaging out of these two must have got me my pass.