Daniella Adeluwoye’s piece (At Cambridge I learned class still matters, Journal, 24 September) reminded me of when, 40 years ago, living in a pit village, I took exams to join the civil service fast stream. The exam paper had a paragraph explaining that you were to write for someone who was “a Senior Wrangler at Cambridge”. I hadn’t a clue why it mattered that someone wore really old jeans as a student.
Stan Godfrey
Washington, Tyne and Wear
• So at Eton “oiling” means students being taught how to “charm yourself to success”. On the estate I grew up on “oiling” was what you had to learn in order to get a job at a garage. Parallel lives, parallel vocabularies.
Ivor Morgan
Lincoln
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