This week’s University Challenge quiz on the BBC featured Clare College, Cambridge against Hertford College, Oxford. In his introductory remarks. presenter Jeremy Paxman mentioned among Hertford’s best known alumni John Donne, Jonathan Swift and Evelyn Waugh. He went on to note that Waugh claimed that as a student he avoided work and never attended chapel. Paxman went on, however, to credit Waugh with writing “one of the most enduring images of student life” in Brideshead Revisited where Charles Ryder is a student at Hertford and meets Sebastian Flyte when the latter vomits into Charles’ rooms.
This is episode 5 of the current series. Clare won the round 160-150, but Hertford, which was ahead for most of the action and lost on the last question, may be back in the later rounds based on their score. The program remains available to watch on BBC iPlayer with a UK internet connection.
