Heather Hancock

Interview of Heather Hancock on 7.7.23

AM: It's a delight to have a chance to talk to Heather Hancock, Master of St John's. Thank you very much for doing this Heather.
HH: Thank you for having me around Alan.

AM: I always start by asking when and where you were born?
HH: I was born in 1965 in Colne in North East Lancashire, in the Christiana Hartley Maternity Home.

AM: Renowned I'm sure, I'm sure they have a blue plaque to you.
HH: I have since arriving in Cambridge, met a very distinguished academic in the medical sciences. She was born in the same place within about two months. So there's at least two of us now in Cambridge.

AM: Two blue plaques, good. I ask people to talk about their family a bit, one or two generations back to get a feeling of their background. One or two go back to the Norman Conquest but that's unusual. But did you know your grandparents?
HH: I did, so my grandparents on my mother's side, they lived in Burnley. My maternal grandfather was a hospital porter and my maternal grandmother had been a mill worker. I don't think she really worked by the time I knew her. But cotton mills were the way one earned one's living then. And on my father's side, my grandfather was a builder, and my father's mother died when he was a baby. So he had a stepmother who kind of came into his life when he was in his teens and she was a housewife.

AM: Right, so that takes you down to your own family.
HH: Well, I can go back to 1156 if you want.
AM: It's got to be back to 1066, I'm afraid. So this was Sir John Gurdon, by the way, of the Gurdon Centre who took himself back to the Norman Conquest. And maybe one or two others. But your parents, tell me about them.
HH: So my parents, my father was a civil engineer with an urban district council and a surveyor. He trained as an engineer at night school in Manchester after he left school. And my mother, when she left school, she had to leave the grammar school at 15. Her parents couldn't afford for her to carry on in education. And she went to work in a tax office in Liverpool, I think. And then she trained as a radiographer. When I was born, she was a school secretary and subsequently trained as a teacher. And then after my sister and I had taken our degrees, she went to do a master's degree and became very eminent in religious education in the country. And actually in Europe as well.
AM: Religious education?
HH: Yes, religious education in the first school was her specialism.
AM: Well, that suggests an obvious question about the religious atmosphere of your family. HH: Well, my father's family were Methodist. There's still a very big streak of me that's Methodist. I went to Methodist Sunday school, but was brought up in the Church of England, really. And yes, we're regular churchgoers in our local parish.
AM: And your mother, if she was a religious expert, was she a practising...?.
HH: Yes, she is. She's a person of faith. Both my parents are still alive. And Yes, my father actually only confirmed in the last 15 years or so. I think that's the Methodist thing, isn't it? But yes.
AM: Do Methodists confirm as well?
HH: Not quite in the same way. Not with the...
AM: Well, sometimes we go off onto deviations and come back to the chronology. Religion is one that interests me because I was quite religious when I was a teenager and so on, wanted to be a missionary or something like that. And Sedbergh was a school I went to as a Quaker sort of influenced school. So has religion been important in your life?
HH: Yes, I'd say so in a quiet way, definitely. I'm not really... It's surprising I'm doing this interview really because I'm not somebody who particularly likes talking about myself. But in terms of my continuing faith and the practice of that, I'm a regular attender in the college chapel. I prefer a quiet approach to worship. And although I think if I was on a desert island I'd definitely be choosing sort of a recording of my favourite hymns to take with me.
AM: Would you?
HH: Yes, I think so.
AM: That's interesting. I mean, I've interviewed quite a lot of head of houses, most of them, at least half of them agnostic or occasionally atheist. And they all make an exception for their college chapel. Like Martin Rees in Trinity and so on, they all say, well, I like the ceremony and the music and the readings and so on.
HH: Well, St John's College Chapel is a place of such inspiring beauty and sound. I mean, you can't ever fail to find some solace or some uplifting moment in it or just mostly great joy. And we are very blessed in John's with our Dean and our Chaplain as well as our amazing choir. So we've got a good team there.
AM: And some nice plaques as well. I've got Paul Dirac's radio in my other room.
HH: Ah, I've got his gown in my library. AM: Have you? Well, we should put the two together someday. It's in our office. So you were confirmed, were you all?
HH: Yes. AM: But you say it's different in...
HH: Well, I was brought up Church of England.
AM: Oh, I see.
HH: But I went to a Methodist Sunday school which my grandmother ran. And I think there's a strong streak of Methodism which is nobody's looking at you. You're not put on this earth to be an adornment. You're put on this earth to do some good work. And are you doing good work?
AM: Oh, that's an interesting self-reflection because you've done so much good work. Maybe it's...
HH: We should carry on asking ourselves the question, I think, always. Is it good enough? Am I doing enough?
AM: So God is perched on your shoulder watching you.
HH: Yes, I think it's that sense of being called to account at some point.
AM: Yes, yes, almost Calvinist. So tell me about... Well, I often ask, what is your earliest memory? Not just sort of looking out of your pram at the trees.
HH: Yes, I can't remember looking out of a pram at the trees. I'm amazed that people can remember that. Although I have a son who can remember things like that. And I'm sceptical and then he'll tell me something. I think, yes, that really did happen. My earliest memory was getting in very big trouble for being at my godmother's house, being put for a snooze, being bored, and peeling the wallpaper off the wall with boredom. I can remember the wallpaper even now what it looked like. I was in very big trouble for that.
AM: How old do you think you were?
HH: I was probably about three-ish.
AM: That's quite early.
HH: I hope I'd learned not to peel wallpaper off by the time I went to school.
AM: I hope so. We'll do an investigation to see if there have been cases against you for doing that. Then after sort of between three and six or so, there's a period of infancy when some people develop indicative hobbies and interests. You know, biologists like Robert Hinde, you know, got interested in birds' nests or something. Did you have any particular enthusiasm? HH: I think there are two things that I had at that age and have never lost. One is a wish to be outside as much as possible in the countryside, always to be outside in the countryside. And then the other thing is to be making things. Anything, I would make anything. I could cook, sew, make music, whatever it was, but there had to be some activity. We shouldn't say I wouldn't sit at home with a book. I would. I mean, I could read a book all day and all night if it was engrossing enough. But my instinct was to be outside and or doing something.
AM: Well, both those things, again, fit into your life's experiences very much because many of the things in the rather undependable Wikipedia on you suggest that you spend a lot of time outdoors on the moors and running athletics associations and things like this.
HH: Yes.
AM: So you've carried on with that streak and you have a house and some big gardens, presumably in Yorkshire.
HH: Well, your garden's never big enough if you're a keen gardener. But yes, we have a nice garden in Yorkshire and that is my pride and joy, even though I'm not there gardening it these days.
AM: Well, it's true that it's never big enough when you're your age, but I can tell you when you're 81. We have an acre and a bit in the fens here and I don't like to use gardeners, so it's quite a... I've just let it go wild, actually, since Covid. So in terms of making things, we'll come back to music, but what other things do you make?
HH: Well, being a Master doesn't leave you a lot of time for making anything, to my frustration. So, oh, but back in the day, I'd make clothes, I'd make furniture, I would make anything I could possibly think I could turn my hand to. I had this terrible habit of thinking, how hard can it be? I can have a go. Sometimes it turns out to be quite a bit harder than I thought.
AM: So you're a good woodworker?
HH: Not these days, but I've been all right in the past.
AM: And you mentioned making music. Music with religion is one of the themes that I'm always interested in. Do you remember as a child or growing up an interest in music?
HH: Yes, so we had a piano. I started learning the piano when I was quite small. We lived in an area where music was an important part of life generally. There'd be lots of concerts. There was a singing club in the village for the children. And then when I was at secondary school, I had a very inspirational history teacher who also played the recorder and was an extraordinary recorder player. And he had a recorder consort and I took up the recorder. Well, I think I probably already played it a bit, probably. But that became my main instrument, which everybody likes to snigger about.
AM: It's a very nice instrument and quite useful too, because you can carry it around.
HH: Yes, and also the repertoire, even when you can play properly. It's got a lovely repertoire. And if you're good enough, you know, there's a man called Carl Dolmetsch, who really was the kind of great reviver of the recorder. And he used to run some amazing sort of summer schools for people from all over Europe to go and play. And participating in that was great.
AM: You went to those?
HH: Went to one of them.
AM: One of them.
HH: And then when I was here at Cambridge, there was an early music consort in the university and I played with that.
AM: Did you play the recorder then?
HH: Yes.
AM: And in terms of listening to music, what music do you prefer?
HH: Um, oh, I would say it's very eclectic. I would listen to almost anything and enjoy it. So, probably there's a lot of Chopin and there's a lot of 80s classics and anything in between, really.
AM: By 80s classics, you mean pop?
HH: Pop, yes. Can you think that? Your formative years, that's the music you do often return to.
AM: I'm looking for things that link us. What about Dire Straits?
HH: Dire Straits is my absolute favourite band in the world.
AM: And mine too, great.
HH: And when I'm playing the piano, I've not been playing the piano for a long time. In fact, this week I have gone and had my first piano lesson since I was about 14, I suspect, maybe a bit earlier. And I have at home some Dire Straits music, which I am determined to master. AM: Great. Well, when they do the memorial service for me and King's, “Brothers in Arms”. HH: Brothers in Arms, oh yes. I can remember there was a librarian at my school, he was very keen on Dire Straits and he thought so much of the poetry we were taught at school was boring. I remember him telling us their Romeo and Juliet song, it had just come out and he was using it as poetry and explaining it to us.
AM: Amazing.
HH: First album I ever bought. Yes, more or less.
AM: We took it to Nepal when we went there. Luckily, Nepal is very slow in changing. For the next 10 years, all we heard in all the cafes and hotels was Dire Straits.
HH: Dire Straits, thanks to you. I like that. .
AM: When you're working, I mean, you're a very practical and committed person, but you obviously write and compose and do things. Do you have music playing when you do that or not?
HH: No. No, I don't. No, I'm just in the zone when I'm working.
AM: Again, I mean, people I've interviewed are divided. Some of them can't work without music, some can't work with music.
HH: I do. You know, my husband who works in the room next door to me, he will often have music on. And I don't mind it. It's quite nice. It doesn't occur to me to do it.
AM: I find it distracting now. What I did find was that if I was starting on a book or something very difficult, I would pick a composer. So I went through a Bach phase, Mozart phase, and then Handel became my great god. And I play a bit of that and then go and write and it helped to break the ice frequently. What about, you mentioned sort of gamesy things. Are you good at games now?
HH: No, I'm not. Partly because I like winning. So if I'm not very good at something, I don't like doing it. I went to a kind of comprehensive school where if you were the clever person, you weren't going to be any good at games. And I wasn't. But I'm not sure whether that's because I couldn't have been or just because I wasn't the clever person. I was all right at running.
AM: It's interesting there was that opposition, because in boys' public schools, they are often together. I mean, Rupert Brooke, for example, was very clever, but he was also captain of the cricket team and so on and so on. And the schools I went to, you could be both. But it was very important to be good at games. The others didn't matter so much.
HH: I suspect at my school, it was important to be good at games, but I wasn't.
AM: Yes. So let's go back to your schools. The first sort of, not the kindergarten, but the first primary school, that was in Colne?
HH: No, it was a little village called Foulridge, which is right on the Lancashire-Yorkshire border. And actually, that's the village that I was born in. By the time I started school, we lived in the next village along, which actually was just over the county border.
AM: It's in the Pennines?
HH: In the Pennines, Yes.
AM: Lovely. Well, I didn't ask you about fishing. I was a manic fisherman at one stage. Are you?
HH: Oh, no. I have fished. I've been for casting lessons for a weekend once. That was a birthday present to my husband. But no, I don't think I've got the patience to stand still. AM: You don't exactly stand still casting, but I can see what you mean.
HH: Yes.
AM: But your husband fishes?
HH: He fishes. Yes, in fact, he's fishing at the moment. He sent me a photo this morning of three fish. I hope we're having them for supper.
AM: Well, they must be game fish then, not...
HH: Well, no, they're wild trout.
AM: Wild trout.
HH: Yes. AM: Round here?
HH: No, no, no. He's up at home in Yorkshire.
AM: Oh, I see. Because that's where I used to fish, obviously, in Yorkshire and so on. Going on to your primary school, where was that?
HH: So that was in this little village, Foulridge, and it was a tiny primary school.
AM: Any good teachers? You don't remember them?
HH: I can remember Miss Ratcliffe. She was a teacher in the, I think, in the second class. In fact, she wrote to me when I became Master. She'd seen something in one of the newspapers. She wrote to me. She said she was my teacher when I was six or seven. She wrote to say that she always expected something like this to happen.
AM: How nice.
HH: It was absolutely lovely of her.
AM: Very sweet. You do wonder whether at the age of, when you were 30, they would have predicted. And then you went on, you did 11 plus?
HH: No, I just went to the local comprehensive school. There wasn't an 11 plus system in our area. AM: Really? And what was that like?
HH: It was fine. It was a perfectly good, ordinary school. About a thousand pupils. And it was in Colne, which was already starting a decline, a post-industrial decline. It was quite a diverse school. Just a regular...
AM: Boys and girls.
HH: Boys, yes. Yes. Yes.

AM: And you said there was a brilliant history teacher. HH: Yep. He was very good. And who else was there? There were some good teachers there.

AM: And you went into the sixth form?.
HH: There wasn't a sixth form there. So after I'd done my GCEs, everybody in the whole district went to sixth form college near Nelson. That's called Nelson and Colne College. So it's a big tertiary college, actually. You went there to do your A-levels or to learn to be a hairdresser or to do your engineering apprenticeship, all manner of things. So I went there for my A-levels.
AM: So by the time you'd done the GCSEs, you hadn't specialised really. You were doing a lot of different subjects.
HH: Yes. Well, I did a lot of GCSEs for sure. I couldn't quite decide what I liked. And I did a lot of them early, so then I did a lot more because there wasn't anything else to do, really.
AM: How many did you do?
HH: I think I did 14 or 15.
AM: I managed to pass five. But then went...
HH: So when I went to do A-levels, I did know... I knew what I wanted to read at university then. I knew I wanted to read land economy at Cambridge. And I took biology, geography, maths, statistics for my A-levels.
AM: It's an odd choice. Why did you choose... How did you know you wanted to do land economy?
HH: Well, the really sad answer to that would be Shula Archer1 was a land agent, and I thought it sounded like a good job. But actually, I wanted to do something that was academically stretching. But there weren't very many things that were academically stretching and rewarding that also had anything to do with land. And I really liked land. I really like the kind of land as a factor of the economy, the way you use land, the natural environment, the development challenges internationally around land. I was fascinated by it.
AM: I suppose the other one is geography?
HH: Yes. And actually, you had to choose a different subject to read land economy here to start with. When I came, you had to have a different part one. So I read geography for part one and then switched to land economy. And the other advantage, - you know, this is still an issue, isn't it, for people who are coming to university as the first in their family to go to college? I knew if I read land economy, I got a professional qualification as well. So in that sort of hesitation and uncertainty about what would I do with this degree, well, it was clear what I could do with it. There was going to be some other benefit from land economy. And that's still something that students or parents ask these days. It's all very well wanting to do history, dear, but what's history going to... What's that going to do for you?
AM: Yes. I mean, I've looked into the history of St John's occasionally because my school, Sedbergh in Yorkshire, was very much tied up with St John's.
HH: Yes, it was, since it was founded. We had about five early foundations connected with John's. And the school that my children went to, when I chaired the Governor's, Giggleswick, that was one of the original schools. And then I think Sedbergh became connected in the... Well, it was only founded in the 18th...
AM: 16th.
HH: Was it? Oh.
AM: 1535. The founder was a Fellow of King's
HH: Oh, right.
AM: ...Roger Lupton, of the Lupton Tower at Eton and so on, but he went back. I could sing you the school's song. In 1528, when Royal Henry ruled the state, came Master Roger Lupton down from Eton in his provost gown and founded a school in Sedbergh Town. Floriat Sedbergia, or Floruit, perhaps. Anyway, so there was this very strong connection. And Wordsworth, both Wordsworths, probably Christopher as well, came through that North-Western.... which gave... Several of my friends from Sedbergh went on going there. Is there still a connection?
HH: There's a very strong connection. Why did I apply to St John's? Because John's were out in the North of England saying, we have this strong connection with the North of England. They went to see the sixth form college I was in and... I didn't see them, but saw the principal, said we're interested in your students. And so that's why I applied to John's.
AM: Is it? I was wondering because Magdalene was the big land economy college at one point. And a lot of people went there, but you didn't think of a lot of Magdalene.
HH: Well, Magdalene didn't take women at the time.
AM: Oh, yes, of course. Ah, yes. So you have to be at a time when they take women. When did John's...
HH: 84. They started taking undergraduate women in 82.
AM: 82.
HH: And I went in 84.
AM: Excellent. So...
HH: But I mean, on that point about the North of England, I mean, John's is still... Lady Margaret Beaufort, when she founded John's, it was for the poor scholars of the seven northern counties, that was her big focus. And when I went to John's, it was very much known as a kind of Northern grammar school college. It's shifted a bit in more recent years, but we are regaining that ground.
AM: I mean, I don't know whether the college had financial connections, Trinity, for example, and the living of Sedbergh church and so on. Does John's have property in...?
HH: Particularly around Humberside and North East Lincolnshire, going back to the Fisher days.
AM: That's interesting. So you came to Cambridge, 84. Can you remember any first impressions of coming?
HH: Oh, gosh, yes. The sort of shock and awe, isn't it? Oh, my word, what have I done? Why are these people talking about books I've never heard of and places that they've clearly been to and I could barely identify on a map?
AM: Were you speaking in a strong Northern accent?
HH: I don't know. Possibly.
AM: I mean, my stepdaughter, when she came down from Dent, came into the King's College Hall and looked round and said, gee, this is the poshest caf I've ever been in. So she did have an accent then, but quickly learned to bury it.
HH: I probably did, yes. I'm not sure if I had a very strong Northern accent, but I definitely had an accent.
AM: So how long did it take you to get over a shock and awe?
HH: A term, I think. I remember going home at the end of the first term and thinking, this has been a terrible mistake. I don't think I'll go back.
AM: Really?
HH: Yes. And then after about three days at home, thinking, I'll definitely go back. I was incredibly homesick. It didn't rain very much. That was odd.
AM: Cold winds.
HH: Yes. Cold winds and no rain. And also, I just, I think, I'd had a gap year as well. So it was a bit sort of, I'd been used to being a bit more independent and then suddenly, back in this sort of strange, kind of more cloistered world, just took a bit of getting used to.
AM Well, you must have enjoyed the three years and after, you want to come back to Mastership?
HH: I absolutely loved it. After I came back, after that first Christmas, I loved it.
AM: Were there any teachers who were particularly inspiring?
HH: Oh gosh, Yes. Well, I had, I mean, the first year, I absolutely, David Stoddart, who of course was famed in the geography department. I remember going on field trips with him and Tim Bayliss Smith.
AM: Who was this? Stoddart.
HH: Stoddart. And going out onto...
AM: What was his first...?
HH: David Stoddart. Yes. And going out onto the north Norfolk coast, sitting on platforms, measuring the tide coming in and the tide coming out all night. Brilliant. Sort of being collected by boat afterwards, or some kind of dinghy or something. And then, and actually the Fellows in John's, I mean, fabulous directors of studies and tutors who were still Fellows when I was elected Master, which was really quite lovely. And then in land economy, well, Gordon Cameron was the head of department there and he was a wonderful teacher and a fabulous encourager of talent. Pete Tyler, who's still a fellow at Cat's. Quite a few people.
AM: Was Barry Farmer...?
HH: Benny Farmer was still at John's then, yes.
AM: Because he was head of the Institute Hall.
HH: Yes.
AM: I knew him quite well through anthropology.
HH: John's had a brilliant society called the Purchas Society for geographers and land economists, and that was a great kind of collecting point for the likes of Benny Farmer, who's a great Purchasian.
AM: Did you live in college?
HH: Lived in college all three years, yes. Progressed from Cripps to New Court to a fabulous set, which is called the Triple Set, which is in the Second Court of St. John's, and it's two storeys.
AM: Wonderful.
HH: Indoor bathroom, all kinds of luxuries.
AM: How did you get that?
HH: You had to be, sort of, ...academic merit was the way they were given out.
AM: So you were winning the scholarships and..
HH: ...doing all right.
AM:: Yes, Yes. You're obviously very bright. And while you were there, were there any particular friendships you formed which have gone on since?
HH: I think lots of friendships and, oh, but also I think lots of sort of openings into new worlds. That was the brilliant thing about it. And it's lovely now being back at John's and people from my year, the year above, the year below, now coming back, got more time on their hands. They want to reconnect with college. That's really lovely. My sister was at John's as well, so she joined when I was in the third year. So we were the first sisters to enter college.
AM: What subject did she do?
HH: Very original, my family, land economy. But my brother-in-law, who's also a Johnian, and he did law, so there's some redeeming feature there.
AM: And in terms of other activities, like joining societies or the Union or anything like that, did you?
HH: I dabbled in all kinds of things. I did a bit of, I wrote a little bit for Varsity, I did some music, I was on the ball committee, helped start the first ladies cricket team in the college, all manner of things. And had a lot of good fun. I mean, I did like parties....I liked parties and I liked the University Library, somewhere, always on the spectrum between the two.
AM: Rushing from one to the other. And you started the cricket team, do you play for them?
HH: They don't have a team at the moment. We need to get them sorted out to get a women's cricket team back up and running. We have some very good female cricketers in John's as well, so we'll be able to get that. I gave up cricket, I started - when I was at the Home Office - I played for the Home Office in a mixed team. And I was in the finance department of the Home Office at the time, I was the economist there. And the head of the department, captain of the team, had me fielding at silly mid-on, and I had a very, very badly taken catch. So major operation on my finger afterwards, and it put me off cricket, I think a bit. Or at least playing cricket properly.
AM: I know the feeling with rugger. So, did you go straight into the Home Office?
HH: No, I didn't. So when I graduated, Gordon Cameron, head of department, kept saying to me, you really don't want to be a land agent. You really, really don't want to be a land agent. I'm quite obstinate. So I said, yes, I absolutely do. That's why I've come to do this course. I want to be a land agent. He said, no, no, you stay here. Here's a PhD, come and do this PhD. So I did a bit of a deal. I said, right, if I'll go and be a land agent, if I don't like it, can I come back and do the PhD? Yes, you can. So I went off to be a land agent for Carter Jonas. And after about three and a half minutes, realised, no, I didn't want to be a land agent. What a dead men's shoes. I mean, lovely people and fabulous being able to engage with farming and the environment and what was happening on the land. But dead men's shoes kind of activity, really. I worked for a firm where when the senior partner came in the room, you stood up, you didn't speak until the senior partner spoke to you. So I decided I wasn't going to be a land agent, but I thought I needed to try another job before I returned to Cambridge, because if I came back, I would never leave. So I had to be certain. So then I applied to the Government Economic Service. So that's a kind of fast stream for economists. And I remember going for the interview because obviously I'd done economics as part of land economy, but I've not done a full economics degree. And I went for an interview with a very eminent lady from Oxford. I don't know what she's called, I can't remember. I remember her saying to me, well, what if what if something to do with “X” theory comes up in work? I said, well, I've never heard of “X” theory, but I guess I'll go and read up about it. And I couldn't believe that after being quite so cheeky in an interview that I got a letter offering me an appointment to the Government Economic Service as a fast stream economist, but I'd be posted to the agriculture department. So I wrote back and I said, well, thank you so much. But actually, I'm leaving that stuff. I'm not doing agriculture any more. So no, thank you. And then they wrote back again and said, well, okay, you could go to the Home Office, which seemed to be quite a sort of an upgrade, really. So I arrived at the Home Office on day one and asked for the economics department and discovered it was me.
AM: So would you think of yourself as an economist?
HH: No, no. But I could think of myself in those days, I mean, it would be rusty now, but in those days, I could think of myself as an applied economist. I had...I absolutely had the competence to operate in the Home Office as an applied economist. And this is the time when the first public expenditure surveys were coming in, when there was a lot more effort being made about kind of cost benefit analysis. The Green Book was really being sort of held as a model about how one ought to make more evidence-based decisions about policy.
AM: My model of bureaucracy and the Home Office is that it's a little bit dry and it's a little hierarchical and so on so the usual prejudices. But you've done job after job in all sorts of different parts of the Civil Service and associated things. You obviously thrive in it.
HH: Well, you see, the first half of my career is in the public sector. And, you know, I was very lucky going into the Home Office in the way I've just described, because actually, I had immediate exposure to the top of the office. And so I'd only been there, I think, a couple of years when I was in private office, I was the Home Secretary's private secretary. And that's just, you know, if you're in a niche that suddenly is having a moment, then you get some visibility. And as long as you're not completely hopeless, then that visibility kind of opens up new opportunities. And going into private office, so I started working for David Waddington when he was Home Secretary. Six weeks later, I was witnessing the downfall of Margaret Thatcher at close quarters, going through a change of Home Secretary and of an entire ministerial team, Ken Baker came in. And then we had the '92 election, where we all thought that there'd be a change of government, that I can remember the preparatory discussions with Roy Hattersley and his team about them coming into office, which of course is what you do if you're sort of in those sorts of roles. And then after the general election, Ken Baker coming back in. And then shortly after that, switching to Ken Clark. So I mean, the Civil Service is brilliant for a young person to, you know, to have those opportunities and to just absorb the way in which the system works. It was fascinating. And I absolutely have always been really interested in politics. I've never wanted to be a politician. But I am fascinated by the way politics operates and the people in politics operate and how it's thought to be easy from the outside, but actually on the inside, making things happen that are good for the majority and not harmful to the minority, because it's never ever quite good for everybody all the time. That's difficult and complicated and takes skill and nerve, and political skill as well as administrative skill and nerve. So I've just found that really exciting. But after the '92 election, I was becoming sort of a bit of a bit of a serial private secretary. And it was quite tough because, you know, in those days, we still had a live IRA bombing campaign on the mainland. So if you were the duty private secretary, your weekend could be spent dealing with some really, really terrible things. And I was just getting married. So we decided that carrying on in such a high profile private office and starting a married life weren't quite the right match. So I went to help start the Department of National Heritage. I went and lobbied the permanent secretary there to say, you need me to come and help you start this department. You don't get many chances in government to start a new department. And so it was one of those kind of great opportunities to say, I want to be, I want to see how you do it. I want to know how you start from scratch with something.
AM: I mean, there'd been lots of heritage organisations before that, National Trust and so on. What was different about the National Heritage?
HH: Well, I mean, it was a government department, so it was brigading everything. So it was taking Tourism out of the Department of, whatever the Department of Work and Pensions was called at the time, tourism sat there. It was taking Broadcasting from the Home Office. There was an Arts sort of department, but it was a sub, I think it was a subset of the Cabinet Office at the time, and pulling them all together into a department, which was starting to say, actually, government thinks that the kind of the cultural and sporting life of the country, it merits its own departmental and cabinet focus. So that was the big, big change there really.
AM: When you said sporting, I mean, when you say National Heritage, people, I mean, can't see how sports part of it.
HH: Well, of course, now it's called the Department of Culture, Media and Sport.
AM: Oh, I see.
HH: Yes, but at the time, it was the National Heritage Department. And I'd been working on the National Lottery when it had gone into the Tory manifesto. This is a good example of my Methodist roots. I remember Ken Baker coming into the office as, this was kind of an early run up to the general election in '92 and saying, oh, I think we should have a National Lottery. And me thinking, oh, I think it's a terrible idea, Home Secretary, terrible idea. gambling, this is very bad. Anyway, but I took the National Lottery, we took the National Lottery into this new department, and that was also a big focus point for it as well.
AM: When you recount that anecdote, we all think of, “Yes, Minister”, and you say it's a terrible idea, Minister, but he just goes on regardless. Is that right? Or do you?
HH: Well, he turned out to have a good idea, didn't he? Well, I mean, actually, I think to be fair, my anxieties about gambling have been borne out by the deregulation of gambling and the deep harm that's done. I don't think the National Lottery has been a big part of that. But I still think gambling is really not to be encouraged. I'm as likely as anybody else to go to the horse races and spend a fiver, but I think that you need to be very careful about where you lead people with these sorts of things. But the National Lottery generated immense amounts of money for incredibly good causes.
AM: Yes. The end justifies the means. Which minister did you find most agreeable to work with?
HH: Oh, gosh, what an interesting question. Most agreeable. I think that would probably be probably Virginia Bottomley or Peter Brooke. They were both culture ministers, as we'd call them now, National Heritage Ministers then. Peter Brooke, a very thoughtful, reflective person. And Virginia Bottomley, I really admired her because, well, I do admire her, because she really understood the practicalities of how is this going to affect somebody? How will they live their life in this way? How will we make sure that sort of a mother with a child in a pram through to a captain of industry, whatever it is, she was thinking about the whole spectrum of society. I was always impressed about that.
AM: I mean, I think I was half hoping you would say Ken Clarke.
HH: Oh, you said, well, what was your question?
AM: Which minister did you work for?
HH: Yes, well, there's different things. I did work for him and he was very nice to work for. Being Home Secretary is a tough gig and there's an awful lot of work to get through every day and every night. And I think he had briefs he enjoyed more than being Home Secretary.
AM: Because he was at King's, I think, and maybe or maybe not. But anyway, I've always admired his...
HH: Well, I think he's been an excellent politician. I think his real love was Education. I think that was probably the department he liked most. He came to the Home Office from Education. But I mean, by far the jolliest Home Secretary I worked for, most fun. But I'd say Kenneth Baker was the Home Secretary I worked for who was most invested in, for example, improving the lot of prisoners. He was really committed to education of prisoners and improving conditions for prisoners. So different merits for different people.
AM: When I was having a conversation with Vince Cable earlier in the week, we were discussing the relative virtues of the Chinese and the British political systems. And he was defending the British one against my assault. And he said one of its great advantages is it separates politics from administration. And therefore, you can have pretty incompetent politicians, but they're covered over by good administrators. And I suggested to him that since Tony Blair, the strength of the administrative civil service has been undermined a lot by private advisors and other strategems. But I'm not sure whether I'm right or not. Is that your impression?
HH: I don't... Well, I do think there's a difference. So I left the Civil Service in the mid-nineties and didn't engage with it really again in any material way until I was chairing a department in the last 10 years or so. And there was a definite difference in terms of the ..sometimes the pride in the role. I think the attention to detail, yes, the attention to detail, I think is quite different. But also the..
AM: In what respect?
HH: Oh, just the quality of a minute. The quality of a brief.
AM: It's deteriorated?
HH: Deteriorated,. Yes. You know, if you're going to be a good Civil Servant, then the art of drafting is everything, really. Good advice, well presented. I think I also witnessed, saw over that shift, a bit more chumminess. I don't think it's a good idea to be chummy with your minister. I never could have brought myself to call the Home Secretary anything other than Home Secretary or Secretary of State. We weren't there to be friends. If it worked, it was a relationship of mutual respect. I was there to serve the government of the day and he was the government of the day. So I think that's a dangerous thing and you all get a little bit too invested in each other's success, and that's not really the way it ought to work.
AM: So you try and please them so that you could be better chums, you mean?
HH: I don't even know whether one does that knowingly, but I think it's a risk. And you know, if you're going to the same parties and you're in the same networks, then you're also guilty of potentially selecting out other voices and not exposing yourself to a different perspective or to the kind of challenge that a policy needs.
AM: When you said you went out of the public sector government, you then did a series of different jobs. Which of those do you think has been the most rewarding and important for you?
HH: Well, the main thing I did once I'd left the public sector, after I left the Civil Service, I ran a National Park Authority, so local government. I ran that and then I went into regional government and I loved doing both of those things. The National Park was fantastic. You know, so we'd established I really like land and I really like the natural environment, and so running a National Park is sort of nirvana from that point of view and it really was. And I've dipped in and out of it being my day job or a side of desk activity, the countryside, but it's never been been far away. When I did so it was in the early 2000s, I went into the private sector and I joined a firm called Deloitte as a partner in its strategy practice. And that was fantastic because it was an.., it forced me to learn an entirely new way of regarding and presenting my ideas. So I've already mentioned if you're in the public sector or back then in the public sector, your ability to have an idea, describe it, commit it to paper as well as to execute it was important. Going into consulting, your ability to describe an idea through shapes and PowerPoint slides was the thing that mattered. My brain didn't work like that. I had to train it to work like that. And then also just, you know, in a different sector, just an entirely different language, talk about the same things, but an entirely different language. And I think it took me about six months to think, okay, right, I think I've got this. But it was.., I loved Deloitte because I was very fortunate. I was elected to the board of partners. I became managing partner in the UK and Switzerland. It was a combined partnership there. I led the firm's brand globally as a global managing director. And I did all that in 11 years. It was a land of opportunity and my main client there - So I specialised in governance and governance and novel structures, public-private organisations and structures and complex programme leadership - And my main client was the Olympic movement.
AM: So which movement?
HH: The Olympic movement. So that was...
AM: You were deputy chair of...
HH: And I was, Yes. So after I'd worked on the London Olympics, I became deputy chair of the world athletics championships. Yes.
AM: That's why I thought you were very athletic.
HH: Yes, I've done a lot of work in sport. I think back in the early nineties, I chaired a working group for the Football Association for a couple of years on the future of football. I think it's very good in sport if somebody who's doesn't want to be a footballer is advising on the future of football sometimes. And if in athletics, somebody who doesn't think that they could have run the hundred metres is helping stage championships. That can be helpful.
AM: Your CV and what you've described suggests you're incredibly energetic, efficient, well organised. What characteristics, not being overly modest or anything about yourself, would you, if someone asks you, well, how can I be like you and do all those different things, move from one thing to another and simultaneously, how do you do all those things?
HH: Well, I think the things I'm good at, I'm good at understanding risk and accountability and governance systems. And I'm not afraid to have an idea. And if I have an idea, to know that if somebody turned around and said, well, make it happen, I would know who we would need to bring around the table to make it happen. And I think I'm reasonably good at being a fairly galvanising person. Well, great leadership is 50% optimism anyway, isn't it? So I've got plenty of that. So I think it's those sorts of things, really. And I am just relentlessly interested in how does that work? How do you make that thing happen? And I like big, difficult, complicated things. I liked being in the Regional Development Agency, because for once in the public sector, you have the confidence that you could see where the economic infrastructure of a region needed to change. And it might be a 30-year project to change it. But you could with confidence start to embed that change, because regional government in the way that was set up was operating at some distance from the normal electoral cycle. The electoral cycle is a terrible thing these days for being able to make a long-term strategic improvement to the quality of people's lives. And so I quite like doing things where you can... I love being in the public sector, but it can be a big constraint. So finding ways in which you can harness that sense of purpose and mission, but with a chance that you can make it happen. I think that's the thing that motivates me most. But yes, big, difficult things. So after I finished at Deloitte, I promised my children I'd go back home before they finished school, because I was mostly a kind of a weekly boarder away from home. And when I did go back home, they thought me being there was a terribly bad idea, because I was “on their case”. So they didn't need that, apparently. And then I....so I built a very interesting portfolio. And the main thing was to chair a regulator, the Food Standards Agency. So I did that. And I took on the chair of that two months before the Brexit referendum. So you asked me what I've enjoyed most. And actually, I think probably if I was to look at the thing I'm now most proud of, I'd say I'm most proud of steering that department. It's a non-ministerial department, which gives it immense independence as a part of government, not under ministerial direction. But we built a regulatory regime for the post-Brexit era, which has all the checks and balances that you need to protect public confidence in food and keep people safe in relation to food, and hopefully, give people trust in the system in their food. And it was ready for the very first exit deadline. So that was a big, complicated thing to do.
AM: You don't have to answer this, but what was your view on Brexit?
HH: Well, I have never actually said what my view on Brexit is. And you know, I didn't do to start with, because I chaired a regulator. And I was clear from the start, and I said to my board, we will never express an opinion about the referendum outcome, because we must not give anybody an opportunity to say the way we're building this regulatory regime is influenced by a position of whether they think it's a good thing or a bad thing.
AM: So you've stuck to that since?
HH: And I've stuck to that ever since. I can, you know, if you live in the north of England, and you see those places that feel left behind or overlooked or angry about the direction that life is taking, and that they're not having a voice, you can understand many things about that vote. And I don't think people were served well by the evidence or information that they were given in preparing for it. But now we are where we are.
AM: One thing about the food standards, did you have anything to do with the nutritional and other value of food? Because what I can't understand is why we continue to suffer from this terrible obesity epidemic. And we don't just really regulate intake of sugar and salt. But did you have to do have anything to do with that?
HH: Well, sadly, no. So just before I took over, the government....so the Food Standards Agency, when set up by John Krebs in the aftermath of the BSE crisis, did have responsibility for nutrition. And shortly before I took over, the government in England and in Wales repatriated to itself to administer that responsibility. And so the department was a department in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, very unusual to be running a single department for something that's devolved in three countries, which was another fascinating layer of complexity. We were still responsible for nutrition in Northern Ireland. But that really wasn't a strong enough base to be able to influence the English market, really, which is what sets the benchmark. And it is a great shame because the FSA particularly made good progress on salt reduction. The industry had lobbied, I think, to have that responsibility taken away from the regulator, subsequently regretted it. Because you know where you are with a regulator, and you don't know where you are with politicians.
AM: So after all those excitements, you came back to the little pond, which we call Cambridge, three years ago. Tell me something about coming back. Of course, you came at a terrible time, just at the beginning of Covid, more or less, didn't you?
HH: Yes, I arrived back in September 2020. So just as everybody was preparing to welcome students back to Cambridge, having sent them home at the start of the pandemic. Well, you know, it was terrible. Everything was terrible and horrible, wasn't it? And in some ways, if you're going to come from the outside into an institution as one such as St. John's, and okay, it was my college, and I was honoured to be an honorary fellow there, but I didn't know anything, really, about how the college operated. The fact that there was something of a kind of a crisis, and one had to be a bit more granular than a Master would ever normally be about what's going on and how are we doing these things, just in terms of are we all taking the right steps, making sure things are safe, managing the risk properly. So actually, in some ways, coming in from the outside as a new Master, Covid was quite helpful in kind of...
AM: Out of it at peace and calm.
HH: Well, also, but an immersion into every dimension of college life, because you had to know how it was all happening. And it was, yes, there was... There wasn't as much parading about being looked at to start with, so that was good as well.
AM: Have you enjoyed doing it?
HH: I have really enjoyed doing it. It's such a lovely college. The fellowship are fantastic, and so welcoming and so warm. And Yes, no... I should touch on one point, there's no factions in John's. Many people have, of course, they have all kinds of different opinions in the fellowship, but it's really cohesive. And if we've made a decision, then we all stick to it and go with it. And the students, you know, an absolute joy. And the other thing I hadn't really thought about so much before I came was just how rewarding it would be to engage with the postgraduate community. And that I've particularly enjoyed sort of understanding and getting to know our postgraduates and what they're doing and their motivations and where they think that this stage in their academic life will take them.
AM: And you mentioned before you came to see me, talking about the President. Is that the President of St. John's?
HH: Yes, we have a President.
AM: So what is... we don't have a President, we have a Vice Provost. Is that the same sort of thing?
HH: Well, I don't know. The President is really, he's elected by the Fellows to deal with matters specifically about the interests of the fellowship. And also, if I'm wildly out of order, to bring me into line.
AM: Yes, yes, that's similar. The Vice Provost is the intermediary between the Fellows and the Provost.
HH: I think it's a strange thing actually, coming from a different world, because it's sort of surprising that there needs to be an intermediary. But I suppose if there was a great upset, somebody would have to deal with it.
AM: Why I ask is that Trinity is very different in that the Master really doesn't do very much of the day-to-day work of running Trinity. I'd gathered from Martin Rees and others, they have quite a lot of structure below the Master. Whereas in King's and obviously in John's, you have to do a lot of that.
HH: Well, I have to do... there's a lot of chairing committees. And a lot of... I would say, hopefully the main contribution one makes as Master is that this fabulous bottom-up system of decision-making in the College, is helping ensure that at the top it joins up. So I think there's a lot of thinking about, well, will that join up? Because otherwise everyone's wasting their time and energy. If their recommendations are not going to join up, we need to understand why and get to it sooner than sort of an entire year's worth of committee deliberation - and then there's a mismatch between two. So I think probably that's where my energy and effort goes into. We've got a fabulous Senior Tutor, Senior Bursar, a very good team who are doing the real work.
AM: How long can you be Master?
HH: Ten years.
AM: So you've got another seven, is that right? And you'll be about 63 or something like that?
HH: Yes, I will.
AM: So you've got another career after that.
HH: Well, I need to go back and sort my garden out.
AM: You've got several careers since we live such a long time. We've got two or three minutes. Is there anything I should have asked you about or talked about? You mentioned your children, your husband, which some people forget to mention. Is there anything you would have liked to have been asked?
HH: I don't know.
AM: I'll ask you one desert island question. The book you would take to your desert island.
HH: So you have to just one book?
AM: Just one book. Not the Bible or Shakespeare.
HH: Oh gosh, just one book is too difficult.
AM: You can say three if you like.
HH: I was going to say, I'd take “The Pallisers” or something like that. I think if it's only one book, I think I'd probably take “The Masters”.
AM: Really? C.P. Snow? It's a strange reading.
HH: It’s the marginalia – is this correct?
AM: Well, having endured six or seven Provost-ship elections here, it's interesting how much it's changed from, you know, what was a very small group, and the nature of the Heads of Colleges has changed so much. Most of them are women now in the big colleges and mostly outsiders and non-academics and so on.
HH: Why do you think they're mostly women in the big colleges? Do you think it's just...
AM: I see, you're not challenging the fact that this is the case.
HH: No, no, no.
AM: I think it's just random statistics.
HH: Random.
AM: I don't think there was a choice and it's a bit like, you know, why do people commit suicide in April? I don't think oh it's April so I had better commit suicide.
HH: I just wondered if there was a sort of a... something about the role, which means there are more women in positions that might be considered sort of suitable hunting grounds for it.
AM: I think that... There's something about it. I mean, it's, you know, Jesus and King's and John's and...
HH: Trinity.
AM: Trinity and so on and so on. It may also be... I mean, now most of the problems for Masters have to do with culture wars, dealing with, you know, all sorts of problems of gender and exclusion and race and harassment and so on and so on. And women often thought maybe to be quite good at that sort of thing. That and fundraising. Maybe they're good at that too. Anyway, we're just right at the end. So I'd like to thank you very much indeed for a delightful interview. I'm sorry you're associated with our rugger opponents, Giggleswick and not..., but you can't be perfect. 1Character in BBC radio drama, 'The Archers'.