Daphne Park Memorial book 3_3.indd - Somerville College

Oxford 1940 - 43IN HER OWN WORDS:I WENT UP TO OXFORD very self-confident. Bear in mind, too, that we were atthe beginning of a war. The very month that I went up, the docks were set ablaze andthe Battle of Britain took place – one was thinking about something much, much biggerthan oneself. People one knew were getting killed. There was a great danger threateningthe country. I don’t think we ever feared that Britain would actually be invaded, but wewell knew that life was dangerous, and the idea removed quite a lot of one’s normalpreoccupations. The war had a marked effect on our generation – it gave us a senseof perspective. And women were playing a considerable part in the war. They weregoing into the services, they were ferrying aircraft, they were in the factories and theambulance service. Women were doing things with men, side by side. I don’t think thatat that time there was any particular need, as a woman, to prove yourself. I was aware,however, that there were some things I was able to do at Oxford because so many of themen weren’t there. For instance, I became the president of the Liberal Club. I believeI was one of the first women to be the president of a university political society, and Ithink, realistically speaking, that if the normal number of young men had been there mychances would have been greatly reduced.”Daphne Park in conversation with Caroline Alexander, January 1989IN HILARY TERM 1943 a number of undergraduates volunteered to take part in amock blitz organised by the City Council to test Oxford’s preparedness for an emergency;the Principal was subsequently congratulated by the Town Clerk on the histrionic abilityof one Somervillian “whose realistic impersonation of a hysterical foreigner deprivedof house and sense and all coherent speech had shown up some weak spots in the cityorganisation.” The undergraduate in question was later identified as a modern linguist inher final year, Daphne Park.Pauline Adams, Somerville For Women (OUP, 1996), p.243.18