Unreality made itself felt in an institution that turned on regulation, ritual and calendar; but not at once. From the moment of Neville Chamberlain's speech announcing that Britain and Germany were now at war, preparations long made for a change of gear in civilian life came into operation. In so many ways 1939 did not look like 1914. Trenches had carved their way across Hyde Park a full year earlier when Chamberlain had returned from his terrifying meeting with Hitler and his massed generals at Bad Godesberg. Phrases from that aggressive encounter must have echoed in his mind: ‘Es tut mir Leid, Herr Chamberlain, das geht nicht mehr.’ Rearmament had begun in earnest in 1937 and the first Spitfires had begun to emerge from the factories. War had come out of a grey sky, not a blue one, and the British people moved towards the inevitable with a grim resignation. Their government tried to maintain some normality in the universities rather than see them collapse into the deserted common rooms of the First World War. University faculty enjoyed in principle a reserved occupation and would not become vulnerable to conscription; students could follow two years of their courses – more in some scientific and medical subjects – before finding themselves called up for military service. In Cambridge the colleges remained about half full and teaching continued as normally as could be managed when numerous teachers had volunteered for service, despite their privileged status, in either the armed forces or with government departments.