Toby Young on his unusual route to Oxford University, at 5x15

Add this video
to your playlist

Toby Young on his unusual route to Oxford University, at 5x15

28 Oct 2010

Toby Young describes his unusual route to Oxford Univeristy. Having failed his O-Levels and embarked on what he describes as ‘a path of downward social mobility’, through a work experience programme of manual labour, his Father sent him to a kibbutz in Israel. Inadvertently sobering up there, Young describes how his brain switched on, and the fog of his ‘stoner’ years cleared. He returned to England changed and ambitious, determined to apply to Oxford.

Young failed, predictably, to get the conditional grades, but was sent a letter of acceptance anyway. Although a letter -the correct letter - of rejection followed, Young claims that he was lucky: the letter of acceptance, what he knew to be a clerical mistake, got him in to Oxford. He concludes that this mistake changed his life and that, ultimately, we are at the mercy of blind luck.