3. Oxford Days and Pupillage

For the next four years, I lived in Oxford. Three of those years were devoted to getting a degree in jurisprudence at the University. The fourth was spent working for my Bar Final.

Getting to like Oxford as a city after the ten week stay in Cambridge was difficult. I complained of Oxford's comparative lack of beauty to Alex Quayson Sackey, who was then at Exeter College. In his expansive way, he merely said, “You just wait, you will find that Oxford grows on you.” It took me some time to find out that while the beauty of Cambridge was open and immediately striking to the eye of the visitor, you had to look behind the walls, usually dull and grimy at that time, to find the beauty of Oxford. In time, I came to agree with Quayson Sackey. I still do feel a sense of exhilaration and excitement each time I enter Oxford. No other place in Britain gives me the same sensation.

1951 - 1955 were quite eventful years. Queen Elizabeth II succeeded her father, George VI, and thus became Queen of the United Kingdom and Colonies and of the Commonwealth. Stalin died and was succeeded for a while by a troika, which soon shook down again to the rule of one man: Kruschev. When in early 1988, it was announced that Malenkov, one of the troika had died as an obscure pensioner, one thought how long ago it was that he was a figure to be reckoned with in his country. The Americans overwhelmingly rejected the scholarly liberal, Adlai Stevenson, for the fatherly, if soporific and incoherent, Dwight Eisenhower as President. Everest was conquered by Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tensing, who was to die in 1986. Roger Bannister ran the first sub four-minute mile. There was considerable excitement, enough to keep students pre-occupied.

I do not, however, recall any great events in Oxford itself. About that time, the retiring age for professors was introduced. And as often happens during such changes, holders of office appointed before the change were exempted from the application of the rule. Professor Jolowicz was the Regius Professor of Law. He was in his early sixties and was caught by the retiring age rule. But Professor R.W. Lea, the father of Roman Dutch law in the University, who was in his eighties was not. He could, therefore, serve as long as he liked. I remember Professor Lea's friend and contemporary, Dr. Elemer Balogh, the champion of Comparative Law, telling the story that Professor Lea intended to apply for the Regius Chair when Professor Jolowicz was obliged to retire. H.L.A. Hart succeeded A.L. Goodhart as the Professor of Jurisprudence. I recall a number of people asking who Hart was. All that was known about him was that he had practised for a short time at the Chancery Bar and had been an intelligence officer during the war. Why was he elected, they asked? No one knew that during his tenure he was going to make such a great contribution to philosophy of positivism in jurisprudence as he did, in fact, make.

Dr. Balogh was a character whom law students using the library were bound to see. He always appeared at the Radcliffe Camera during the summer holidays. Some said that this was the time when he put in the requisite residence for keeping up his British nationality. He had his special table at the library which was always piled up with a large number of quaint books. He was believed to be writing his magnum opus. Whether he achieved this ambition, I did not know. He was of regular habit, making his copious notes from his array of books every day in his, by now, shaky hand, taking his nap amongst the books after lunch and a short walk around at about tea-time. He somehow took to me and I spent some delightful hours in his company. He could in a sentence sum up his views of well-known academic legal figures. One of them who produced a number of books and whose scholarship was held in high esteem by tutors and students, was dismissed with the sentence, “Oh, that man, he writes more than he reads.” During all the years that I was in England as a student, the only time that I left its shores for another country was when I was invited by Dr. Balogh to attend the Congress of the International Association of Comparative Lawyers in Paris in the summer of 1954. As speaker after speaker, including the great Roscoe Pound, paid him tribute from the stage, it was clear what a moving spirit behind the distinguished assembly of lawyers gathered there from all over the world, Dr. Balogh was. I had just then finished my final exams at Oxford. Some of the people present, Professors Yntema of Michigan, Friedman of Columbia, Scott of McGill, were names that I had read as authors or legal philosophers. It was an exciting experience. Unfortunately, it was the last time I was to see Dr. Balogh.

As will be recalled, Mr. J.T. Christie was the Principal of my College. He had been a headmaster at Rugby and Westminster Schools before. He still carried the mien of a headmaster. The students at Jesus College unimaginatively called him “the Headmaster” but he held a place of affection in my thoughts. It was, indeed, through his having been a headmaster of Rugby that I owed my place in Jesus College. He had a dry sense of humour which was illustrated by a story he once told me about his service as a member of a commission of enquiry into education in one of the Commonwealth countries. Nothing came of their recommendations. As he wryly commented, to that Government the appointment of the commission was in itself the solution to the problem, not their recommendations. In later,~[* latter or later, latter used ]~ life I found how true this remark was.

Although we lived in diagonally opposite corners of the first quad in Jesus College in my first year, I saw very little of him. But it was not only him that I avoided out of shyness. I practically avoided all dons I was not obliged to meet. The College Chaplain, the Rev. Whitely, who died in 1988, was my Moral Tutor. I met him in his rooms once over a cup of tea. A sort of get-to-know-you meeting. Thereafter, I always acknowledged his presence from a distance. I am happy that this behaviour did not have an adverse effect on the reports that he wrote on me.

In the year that I entered the Jesus College, there was no resident law tutor. I understand that the last time there had been a law tutor was in the time of Principal Hazell in 19[--].~[* missing date ]~ To me, it was a minor revolution to go back in 1986 to find that the College not only had two law dons but a distinguished lawyer, Dr. Peter North, a former Law Commissioner of England, at its head. A couple of weeks before I met Dr. North at the Jesus Gaudy in 1986, I was talking to Justice Patrick Anin, a past student of Selwyn College, Cambridge, in The Gambia. When Dr. North's name was mentioned, he said he started appreciating Cheshire's Private International Law when Dr. North became the editor. Now that I thought was very high praise. I had, as a student, thought of Professor Cheshire as an author of great clarity and lightness of touch. A writer who made the dullest subject, like Real Property, sound entertaining. In that estimate, I was not alone. If a book of his could be improved upon to the extent mentioned by Justice Anin, then Jesus College must have a scholar of the foremost quality as its Principal.

That was the situation in 1986. In my first year at Oxford, with no law don in the College, the five of us reading law were farmed out to Mr. Alan Brown of Worcester College. Apart from Alan Brown, my memory of Worcester as a student was of an occasion when I deeply offended the College Porter by calling the famous College lake “Worcester Pond”. “Pond? pond? You mean the Lake!” My put-down was complete. Alan Brown had been the Senior Proctor of the University in the previous year. It was because he held that office and could not take any more students that my invitation to come up to Jesus College to read law was postponed for a year. I was glad things turned out that way, because had I been asked to start from October 1950, I would have had to confess that my finances were not in order.

With Alan Brown, we discussed not only law but a number of other interesting subjects. He was an Australian who had had his first experience of the English courts when he was junior counsel in the famous contract case of Grant v.Australian Knitting Mills when that case was before the Privy Council in London. Of the background to that decision, we heard much. He was man with a puckish sense of humour. As Mayor of Oxford, he once had to give evidence against the grant of planning permission for the construction of some commercial building in the centre of Oxford. Counsel for the applicants had spent a frustrating afternoon cross-examining him at length without getting anywhere. Eventually, counsel threw his parting shot, “Well Mr. Brown, the wheel has gone full circle, hasn't it?” Whereupon, Alan Brown serenely replied, “Yes, but isn't it what they're supposed to do?”

After our first year, Ian Evans, a student of Brown at Worcester, became our tutor for the next two years. He was resident in Jesus, but he was not a Fellow. Ian Evans saw us through to our Schools examinations. Jesus College then advertised for a Law Fellow. I believe he applied but he did not get it, the person elected being Arthur Rogerson. By then, I was no more affected. But I was sorry that Ian Evans did not get it. I had got on very well with him. I thought he had all the qualities of a good tutor. Obviously, the authorities thought otherwise. Many years later, he told me that his handicap was that he had not taken a first at Schools. Apart from my grounding in law, I believe my first glasses of claret, a subject on which I became an avid though not a particularly knowledgeable reader, were taken after tutorials in his company.

I was delighted when some six years later he appeared in the Attorney General's Department in Ghana on loan from the United Kingdom as legislative draftsman. He had been interviewed and invited to join the Department by Geoffrey Bing as successor to Francis Bennion, the draftsman of the 1960 Republican Constitution, by Geoffrey Bing while he was a member of the United Kingdom Treasury Solicitor's Office. But he served mainly under George Commey Mills Odoi, who did not have the same conception of his potential usefulness as Bing. As a result, he was relegated to drafting subsidiary legislation most of the time. I do not think he found his assignment in Ghana challenging enough. He was the last of the draftsmen loaned by Britain to Ghana.

Ian got married in Ghana. I was his best-man, which gave me great pleasure. Years later, when I based myself in England, he was one of the old friends I called on from time to time. He was then Secretary and Legal Adviser of British Steel Corporation. He retained a lovely sense of humour which always made him excellent company. His wife, Virginia, not the lady at whose wedding I had officiated, was quite fond of my son Ralph. When Ralph got a Research Fellowship at the University of Tromso working on English contract law, he needed an academic in England to whom he could look from time to time for inspiration and guidance. When I asked Ian whether he would be prepared to fill this role, his immediate answer was that inspiration could much better be provided by Virginia, and he was not quite sure that he could give much guidance either.

My contemporaries reading law with me at Jesus College were Jaques Labesse, Michael Mitzman, Alan Maclaren, and McOuat. Perhaps of the lot, Jaques Labesse, who came from Jersey, was the most colourful. In the days when the mode of transport used by most students was the bicycle, Jaques zoomed around on a most powerful motorbike, often with his girl friend in tow.~[* riding pillion? ]~ We got to know each other well when Ian Evans took us on a reading party to a place near St. Mawes in Cornwall during the Easter holidays before we took Schools. Labesse offered to transport me there on the back of his motorbike. I was relieved when Mitzman also offered to take Maclaren and myself by car. I accepted Mitzman's offer with speed. It was fun in Cornwall, working in the mornings, doing whatever took our fancy in the afternoons, meeting together to enjoy a drink of beer in the evenings. Ian Evans had his yacht “Paloma” moored outside and those who enjoyed the sea went yachting in the afternoons. I was not one of them, the most I would have to do with the sea being to join the small boat to the pub at St. Mawes to fetch our keg of beer. I was happy to see Mitzman and Maclaren again at the Gaudy in 1986. Mitzman had become the partner of the well known firm of Bartlett de Reya specialising in property. Maclaren with whom he had kept close touch through the years was in a country practice as a solicitor. We had news that Jaques Labesse was thriving in law practice in Jersey. But of McOuat, no one knew anything.

I worked quite hard at my books. There were some in the Senior Common Room who expected me to get a first. I did not, though my grades for a second as Rogerson said were very good.

I made some very good friends at Oxford. It was only natural that the students from abroad should get to know each other and that those from the British colonial territories should see each other most often. For the internationally minded students, a club by the name Ikwan-es-Safa was formed. Its first President was an Indian, Anandraman, a science graduate student of Trinity, probably the first “black” person that Trinity ever admitted. Trinity had had that reputation for a long time. There was some rivalry over the issue with Balliol next door which had the opposite reputation, as is illustrated by two incidents while I was there. I was once walking down Little Clarendon Street. There was an old man, obviously in his eighties at least, coming opposite me, his eyes fixed on the ground, his heavy step dragging on the pavement. As he got to me, he raised his head, looked at me, merely shouted “Balliol!”, and continued with downcast eyes and heavy feet along his way.

The other incident occurred when I was secretary of the West African Students' Association. Our President then was Alex Quayson-Sackey of Exeter who was later Ghana's representative at the United Nations; the President of the General Assembly in 1965 and Foreign Minister in the latter part of Nkrumah's regime. The College Bump Races were over, and apparently, according to tradition, members of the various colleges were on the river amusing themselves. Among the boats was one from Trinity with a crew which had painted itself black and labelled itself “Balliol”. This brought great resentment amongst race conscious students who thought we were being ridiculed, which no doubt we were. But this took a serious turn when I was asked to summon a meeting of the Association to discuss what we should do about this insult.

I duly summoned the meeting in my rooms in Jesus College. The longer the meeting lasted, the more angry and heated the argument became. There was a growing body which thought that we should lodge some form of protest with the Vice-Chancellor over the matter. The shrinking numbers of those who advocated that the incident be ignored was getting desperate when Eldred Jones of Oriel College, the English scholar, later on to become the Principal of Fourah Bay College in Sierra Leone walked in. Calm, though late, he asked to be told what all the furore was about. Upon hearing the story, he merely asked, in astonishment, but what have we got to complain about, aren't we black? The effect of the question at the time was staggering. It left the hawks quite speechless and the meeting soon dissolved without resolution to carry the matter further.

Amongst students at Oxford from Ghana, then still the Gold Coast, when I got there were Alex Quayson-Sackey, already mentioned, Edward Quist Arcton of Brasenose, John Sagoe of Jesus College, and Kwesi Dua Sekyi of Barnett House. Lawrence Ofosu Appiah, later a Professor of Classics in Ghana and the United States, and Richard Akwei, diplomat and Chairman of the United Nations Public Service Commission, had already left. Even before them had been Abdul Aziz Atta, one of the many children of the far-sighted Atta of Igbirra in Nigeria, whom I had got to know and like when we were at Achimota. Abdul Aziz became the head of the Federal Civil Service in Nigeria, was one of the main instruments in ensuring that the aftermath of the civil war in his country was not one of bloodshed and retribution. But Aziz visited Oxford on his refresher, Second Devonshire Course, while I was there.

Quayson-Sackey, who read PPE, made it plain that he was training to become a politician, though he preferred to describe himself as a budding statesman. Quist Arcton read forestry. He was the most literate forester that I ever came across. I do not know of his ability with trees. But his love of literature was unquestionable. He read widely, often quoted large chunks of some beautiful writing that he had read. He made it a habit of reading The Times daily from beginning to end, often during the summer lying in his digs in Wellington Square without a stitch of clothing on. He was a good companion, except when a couple of weeks had passed by without him hearing from Grace, his girl friend in the Gold Coast, whom he later married. Then it was advisable to avoid him. He could be querulous and unpredictable. He became Chief Conservator of Forests in Ghana, then Principal Secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture. He later worked for many years with the FAO in Rome. I have an impression that without the responsibility which he had had in the busy Ministry which he had headed in Ghana, he felt rather wasted. He could pursue his literary taste but it was insufficient occupation. When Grace died in 1979, he was lost. He was invalided from that organization.

John Kwesi Sagoe, was a year ahead of me in Jesus College, reading law. He was easily one of the ten best dressed men in Oxford. He was on a scholarship to train as a solicitor for the Lands Department in the Gold Coast, where he had been previously employed. But he found the solicitor's course after Oxford rather dull and he started flirting with philosophy. Eventually, he went back to Ghana as a member of its new foreign service. But he did not last very long in that service. He later told friends who enquired what he was doing that he was farming. It was difficult for those of us who knew him in his Oxford days to reconcile that memory with the life of a farmer in Ghana. Unfortunately, he died rather young.

Dua Sekyi was older than most of us. We, therefore treated him, and he enjoyed being treated, as the “chief” amongst us. He had had considerable experience of chieftaincy affairs in his native Akim Abuakwa State. He read Public Administration at Barnett House, then he was called to the Bar and he went home to practice. While I was at the Attorney General's Department, he joined us as one of the Senior State Attorneys. We remained good friends until 1962 when by command of Nkrumah, he and I switched jobs. I saw very little of him after that.

Others from the Gold Coast joined us later in Oxford. One was my old class-mate from Achimota, Joseph Kwame Boafo. Like Dua Sekyi, he came from Akim Abuakwa; like him, Boafo had been connected with the stool administration of that State; and like him, Boafo was originally attached to Barnett House to read Public Adminstration. But after his course there, he became a member of the Queen's College, where he read PPE. Boafo and I had the common background of school back home. We lived in the same digs in Wellington Square. He was on an Akim Abuakwa State scholarship administered by the Cadburys who, through their cocoa interests in the Gold Coast, had become old friends of the Okyenhene of Akim Abuakwa. That scholarship was more generous than that given by the Gold Coast Government. Boafo being a very generous man, often found himself, towards the end of the month, having to meet some small financial obligations on behalf of his friends.

With him, I worked twice at Bournville during the summer holidays. He had approached one of the Cadburys in charge of his scholarship once, I believe it was Lawrence Cadbury, and asked for holiday jobs for himself and me. Mr. Cadbury told him that there was nothing much that he could offer for unskilled temporary people like us. What he had available was chocolate packing during the night. We said we were prepared to try that. It was fun eating all the chocolates one wanted to begin with. But the desire for them did not last beyond three days. After that, all you wanted to do with them was pack them into the half-pound boxes provided empty as quickly as possible. Three weeks each time was the maximum I could stick during the summers of 1953 and 1954.

Boafo was one of the early candidates specially trained with the British Foreign Service and on attachment to Australia for the Ghana Foreign Service. It was a delight to see him and a fellow “student” in Australia, David Evans, meet in our house when David became High Commissioner in Ghana. Boafo later became Ambassador to Lebanon, Yugoslavia and the U.S.S.R. He was suddenly retired with a number of others by the Rawlings administration. I made extensive enquiries about the reason why he was retired. Although for others, former colleagues could assign some reason why this retirement should occur, no one was able to explain Boafo's premature retirement.

Edward Boohene joined us from Birmingham University to do his accountancy. Edward, known as “Lord Teddy of Warnborough Road” gave some of the most entertaining parties during our time. A spot of teaching at the School of Business Administration at Legon followed. But Edward was soon out on his own pursuing what he was obviously cut out for, doing business. His business activities have taken him all over the world and for the major part of the 80s, he was based in Zimbabwe, his wife, Esther, and President Robert Mugabe's wife, Sally, being twin sisters.

Reggie Bannerman, Alex “Chappie” Hutton Mills, Adzei Bekoe and Kofi Tetteh came up to Oxford the year after I graduated, though I stayed on at Oxford reading for my Bar final examination. Reggie and Chappie, I had known for a very long time. But it was with Kofi Tetteh that I formed the firmest friendship. Both Reggie and Chappie were a bit younger than me. Reggie read law at St. Peter's Hall. Except for a period of time when he was based in London and Mauritius, he practised law in Accra after Oxford. I lost track of Chappie's progress at one time. When I found him again, he had some powerful political friends in Ghana. He was closely associated with the veteran politician, Joe Appiah, who was then a roving ambassador of some prominence, during Acheampong's regime. Chappie died in London in his forties.

Adzei with whom I had been neighbours in the same dormitory in Livingstone House at Achimota School took his first degree in the University College in Legon. Like two other brilliant chemists before him, Frank Torto and J.A.K (Fifi) Quartey, Adzei had taken a first. He came up to Balliol College, first to do a B.Sc. in crystallography which soon translated to a D.Phil in the subject under Dr. Dorothy Hodgkin. He went back to teach chemistry at the University of Ghana, succeeding Alex Kwapong as Vice-Chancellor. After that term of office, he joined UNESCO in Kenya and now is with the Canadian aid organization, CIDA, but still based in Nairobi.

Kofi Tetteh had come to Oxford from the United States where he had studied at Columbia and Northwestern Universities. He joined Boafo at Queen's, where he read law. After his call to the Bar, he joined me at the Attorney General's Department in Accra, where he found himself first in the fledgling civil division. But later he changed over to drafting where he stayed until he became Editor of the Ghana Law Reports. There, he made his greatest, though unsung, contribution to Ghanaian law. He managed to produce law reports of the highest quality from any point of view. But in 1978, he moved on under the aegis of the Commonwealth Fund for Technical Co-operation, to Botswana, there to take over the drafting of their laws. In late 1989, the 1987 edition of the Laws of Botswana over which he slaved for the previous two years was published. It was a monumental piece of work, which must have astounded all those who thought that Africans did not have the expertise for this kind of work.

But it was not only with students from the Gold Coast that one made friends at Oxford. The University provided the opportunity for friendships with people from all over the Commonwealth and Colonial territories, with people from all parts of the world. In this way, I am sure that the Universities of Britain at the time afforded opportunities for long-lasting friendships between people of different colour and creed. Friendships which continued in some cases for the rest of their lives. It gave the opportunity for understanding different cultures and communities which would otherwise have been denied the students. It is for this reason that I regret the restrictions due to the multiplication of fees for foreigners which was introduced in Britain by the Thatcher Government. I have already mentioned Ikwan-es-Safa. It catered for as broad an international membership as possible, so not too many members were accepted from one country. Boafo was another member from the Gold Coast. Apart from the Anandraman, the President, there were Adjmani and Venkateswaran from India, both of whom were following diplomacy courses and rose to important positions in their Foreign Service. Venkat, I believe, became the head of the service and Adjmani became one of their senior ambassadors. Through some old friends who had worked in the Attorney General's office in the early 1960s, the Nicholsons, Martin Foley of Balliol and Ireland found us in London after over thirty years most of which he had spent in Mexico. One recalls Scandinavians, Italians, French, Japanese and other nationalities with whom I came into contact through the club.

Of my African friends, I have already mentioned Adedapo Aderemi, the radical son of the Oni of Ife in Nigeria, with whom I came up from London; he to Lincoln while I went to the neighbouring College in the Turl. With Kofi Tetteh came Pius Okigbo of Nigeria from Northwestern University. I had first met him when I was a little boy at Achimota and he came from Nigeria as one of the intermediate students who were relocated from Yaba College in Nigeria to The Gold Coast during the Second World War. The next time I saw him was in late 1954 in St. Giles in Oxford. I had taken my law degree but I was staying on in Oxford to study for my Bar examinations. On that day, I was with some friends walking back from lunch when we met Kofi Tetteh, who had just come over from Northwestern University in the United States to read law, with a friend. Kofi started introducing his friend to my group but when it got to my turn to be introduced, the friend said, “Don't mind that foolish boy, I know him.” He was intellectually brilliant, irreverent and had a puckish sense of humour. He often reduced me to fits of laughter by mimicking his old teacher who came with them from Yaba, Michael Okorodudu, who, incidentally, was my mother's first cousin. Pius's memory for recalling the most risque of stories and telling them with a flourish was fantastic. I took to him at once and we remained friends until he died on 12 September, 2000. In my view, Pius is easily the best economist of our age that Africa has produced.

Pius came to do graduate work in Nuffield College. He also gave some tutorials in University College. That may now not be unusual. But in our day, it was and we were very proud of him. He was Nigeria's Ambassador to the EEC and negotiated the first agreement between Nigeria and the Community. He has been economic advisor of many Nigerian Governments, before and after the Nigerian Civil War. Coming from Aba in the East, he found himself on the Biafran side, advising Emeka Ojukwu, the Biafran leader, who was also at Oxford during this period. He and the distinguished jurist, Sir Louis Mbanefo, came to the Aburi Conference in Ghana as Ojukwu's advisers, where Ojukwu and Gowon, the Federal Nigerian leader, tried to come to some accommodation, a result which was rejected when Gowon got back to Lagos. Upon the surrender of Biafra, he was arrested and kept in prison for some time. He tells of this period of privation with his usual sense of humour. But he was soon advising President Shehu Shagari of Nigeria, with whom he had worked when Shagari was Federal Minister of Finance. From his Government assignments, he withdrew to devote his time to his private consultancy.

C.O. (Tunde) Lawson, who later became Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Health in Nigeria, was up at Exeter when I went up. The “twins” who later played such an important role in Government in Nigeria, Alison Ayida, as Permanent Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Finance, and Felix Asiodu, as Permanent Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Fuel and Power, were contemporaries at Queen's College who came up a year after me to read PPE. Emeka Ojukwu, soldier, politician and leader of Biafra was also a student at the time. David Garrick read law at Brasenose and, thereafter established a successful practice in Lagos in intellectual property law.

Alex Boyo, who really considers himself a King's man from Cambridge, joined us at Oxford when he was doing his medical practical course at the Radcliffe Infirmary. A brilliant scholar from the Warri area of Nigeria, he thought of me more as a relative. He later established the pathology school in the University of Lagos Medical School. He took some comfort from the fact that a whole generation of pathologists in Nigeria were trained by him. Indeed, if he had not been more or less an invalid from age 46 onwards, his contribution to medicine would have been even greater. We were close at Oxford and remained family friends. He is the one friend who has stayed with us is all the seven different houses we lived in during my working life in Ghana and our flat in London. Until he fell ill, he was an easy guest to look after, taking a home as he found it and sharing whatever one had without demands for what was beyond one's means. In other ways his life-style was on the expansive side. He enjoyed repeating that he lived a champagne life on beer salary. He travelled widely and some times did the most crazy but nice things in the course of it, such as routing a journey from Nigeria to Chicago where he had a lecture to deliver three days from the start of the journey through Finland to see Stella's mother in her village. He would take Stella and myself to dinner at the Savoy Hotel to celebrate the delivery of his inaugural lecture as a Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, and the birthday of his wife when he was not earning the income to match it.

Occasionally, we had visitations in Oxford from such august personalities like T.O. Elias, a brilliant law scholar, who later became Attorney General of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, then Judge and eventually President of the International Court of Justice at the Hague. We once stayed together during vacation at 3 Wellington Square. I remember one Nigerian student, a Yuroba like Elias, once thought he had got the undivided attention of the great man, for Elias was great even then, to expound his thoughts about Nigerian politics. This was at the time of the Action Group and the Yoruba society known as Egba Omo Oduduwa. Elias's interlocutor thought Elias himself professed the same tribal political allegiance as himself. So he held forth for about twenty minutes on the virtues of the tribal society. Elias listened to him without intervention for the whole period. After the other subsided, Elias just got up, said good morning to him and walked out of the breakfast room. The put down could not have been more effective.

Friends from the Caribbean included Eldon Warner of Trinidad, who read PPE at St. John's, Doddridge Alleyn, who was at Balliol, then for many years Permanent Secretary of Prime Minister Eric Williams of Trinidad, and who later became their Permanent Representative to the United Nations. A.R.N. (Ray) Robinsin surprised me when he became Minister of Finance in Eric Williams's government in Trinidad. He was such a quiet, even shy man. I do not think he had many friends amongst the West Indian community. But he dropped in occasionally for a quiet chat. I was even more surprised when he later became Prime Minister. When news came through on July 28 1990 that he and a number of Cabinet colleagues had been kidnapped and were being held hostage in the Parliament building by a Muslim sect operating in Trinidad, my concern went beyond the normal concern of someone who merely disapproved of hostage taking and violence. It was the concern of an old friend. So it was with relief that I heard some four days later that he had been released, even though the rebels had shot him in the foot for calling them murderers.

I also saw quite a bit of Stuart Hall, from Jamaica, later to play an important role in the Open University in England; Max Ifyll who worked both in Nigeria and Trinidad; Roy Dickson a member of Exeter College, who became President of the Oxford Union and later worked for Bookers in Guyana. Stuart gave me the best advice I got when he found me worried over the fact that I had not paid my bills with Blackwells, the great booksellers, and Blackwells had written a letter of demand for payment. “Don't worry”, he said, “when I get such letters from Blackwells, all I do is to walk up to the bookstore and buy more books on credit.” He thought Blackwells wrote such demand letters because they just wanted to be sure that the student debtor had not left Oxford without meeting his obligations. So, the best message to give them was to acknowledge one's continuing presence. I took his advice, and, whether it was coincidence or not, it worked. I did not see Stuart again after we had both gone down until about 1988 when he was a Professor of the Open university and we had a reunion with Dod Alleyn, then Trinidad's Ambassador to the United Nations, and David Garrick Garrick, then pretending to be a retired lawyer, in London. Max Ifyll later worked in Nigeria for quite some time and we met again in Ghana when he visited. Roy Dickson, we had an opportunity of seeing much earlier when he visited Ghana.

I also made a number of English friends. By far, the closest was Dick Wilson. He was a brilliant student who got a first class degree in jurisprudence. He then read for the B.C.L., before going to the University of California at Berkeley and there producing a seminal paper on products liability which was then a new subject in the law of tort. But after all that, he went into journalism, first joining the Financial Times, then later becoming the editor of the prestigious Far Eastern Economic Review, during which time he won the Magsaysay Prize, a prize established in memory of the President of the Philippines, for his writing. He then turned to specialising on China, on which he must have written at least a dozen books, and then Japan.

Dick was most helpful to us West African students. He was methodical in making notes of the various subjects he took which he bound in volumes. Those notes were handed over to me when he finished. I handed them over to David Garrick of Nigeria when I finished. He, in turn, handed them over to Kofi Tetteh of Ghana. And so the notes travelled.

I met Dick in my first term at a West African Students' Association. He invited me to his home for Christmas. He informed his family at a very early stage that he was bringing me with him. I understood that it was all right; his family was used to that as he often at that time went on the European Continent on holiday with families on the basis that if a member of one of them was in England, his family would reciprocate with the accommodation and hospitality. But some two weeks before the holidays began, Dick came to tell me that there was a problem. His mother has suddenly realised that the friend he was bringing was black. She had decided then that it was not all right to bring me. She was worried about her seventeen year old daughter, Sally. Naturally, I must have felt disappointed and slighted. But it was not a decision which was going to squash my spirits. I told Dick that that was fair enough. To my surprise, he said it was not at all all right and that if his mother was not going to permit me to spend Christmas with them at home in Guildford, then he was not going home either. This attitude led to considerable tension in the family, with the mother phoning daily in distress to argue Dick from his decision.

Eventually, just before the beginning of the holidays, Dick came with the latest proposal from his mother. Dick should bring me but I was to stay at a nearby hotel at night and spend the day with them. Dick thought this insulting. But to end the crisis, I agreed to go with him on those terms. Our first few days were tense. Mrs. Wilson would never address me, even at the dinner table, directly. But gradually matters eased. I spent about two weeks with them. By the time I was returning to Oxford, we had got to the extent of her asking me about my girl friends. Later, whenever she visited Oxford, she asked specially for me. Sally's reaction to all these events was summed up in one statement. Dick, Sally and I went for a walk round the countryside. We took their dog with us. But all of a sudden we realised that the dog was no more with us. We found it in the kitchen when we got back. Dick started playfully, asking why it deserted us. Sally's remark was that perhaps the dog did not like black people.

Dick and I remained close friends and I hope will remain forever so. He visited us a couple of times in Ghana. When our son, Ralph came to England to study in 1980, Dick was his guardian. I asked him years later why a brilliant law student like him should abandon the law when everything seemed to be going for him. To my mind, such conduct by someone with every promise to do well at a profession, which I thought so well of, was unthinkable. But Dick simply answered that he never wanted to be a lawyer; he took the law degrees to please his father.

I even made one or two friends from South Africa, who in the Oxford of those days were white. I met the late Robin Farquarson through Dick. He was good fun. From what I have heard, he was also very bright. He would say teasing things like, inviting me to visit him in South Africa, where I should be able to spend my day in his company but I would have to retire to the boys' quarters for the night. He would have to buy three types of meat: meat for the family, dogs' meat and boys' meat. He thought it would be the greatest shock to his mother if I were to be introduced as his friend. That he in fact had the opportunity to do in Oxford. I came out of the cinema at St. Giles one day when I saw him and an elderly lady across the road. He shouted to me to come over and there delivered his little surprise. The mother seemed to take it well. The South African students at Oxford at the time appeared very liberal. I once went to a lecture by their High Commissioner at Rhodes House, where I sometimes stayed during vacations, and thought that the really rough time during question time was given to the High Commissioner by the South African students. After the lecture, I asked Robin what happened to the liberal political views of all those who had given that critical examination to apartheid at the lecture when they returned to South Africa. How did they conduct themselves when they were back home? “Oh”, Robin said dismissively, “they soon conform.”

The closest friend I made in Oxford was of a young Finnish girl who had come to England first to see her friend wed and then had stayed to learn English, before proceeding to University in her own country. She was not sure what she wanted to do, so she needed the time to find herself anyway. We met on May 3, 1953. She was then twenty one. We did not get married until she had spent a year in England, gone back to Finland, and started her University course, while I, on the other hand, had finished mine and was on my way back to Africa in 1956. I interrupted that course by asking her to marry me. As I write this paragraph on May 3 1990, we had known each other for thirty seven years and been married for over thirty three.

With these friends, black, white and Asian, we discussed and argued about world affairs, marvelled at the Americans for rejecting Adlai Stevenson for Eisenhower and at American policy towards China; we debated the British underlying reasons and motives of British colonial policy, its Government's attitude towards the colonies in general, Africa in particular, and even more specifically, our respective countries. We from time to time heard such insulting or wounding statements from some of the highest academic intellects specialising on the continent, such as that Africa's contribution to the development of mankind was that it had against great odds managed to survive. Quietly, we resolved to rectify the causes of such statements. From that point of view, some of us admit, after nearly forty years, that we have fought a losing battle.

I recall discussions on Nkrumah coming out of jail to become leader of Government business in the Gold Coast and his win again in the wider election of 1954. What did it meant for democracy in the country? There was concern felt by some of my countrymen that Nkrumah's party was dominated by people without much education. Thinking of myself as more egalitarian than others, I viewed a lack of advanced formal education as not such a great disqualification as my friends seemed to think. I objected to the assumption that only the educated elite like ourselves ought to rule the country. I approved of their general populist views of Nkrumah's party, the Convention People's Party (CPP). I supported the championing by the party of the integration of British Togoland with Ghana. I thought they deserved a chance. By 1954, I had been in Britain by this time for about five years. Those who claimed to have more recent knowledge of the country thought that the CPP was a disaster for the country.

I lived in College in my first year. There was then a system whereby all students had to live in for the first year. During the second year, they had an option whether to continue living in College or going out to live in digs. In their third year, they had to live out. I went out of College in my second year. I did not enjoy the regimentation which went with College life. The food was not inspiring. I thought I could do better on my own. So I joined Mr. Kynnersley's household of students in 48 Wellington Square. Kwame Boafo joined us there, although he was in the next property at St. John's Street. I met two American post-graduates, Don Cadell and George Carver at Kynnersley's. Both were rowers. But of the two Carver, had the distinction of coxing the Oxford boat in 1951 when Oxford sank during the first round and the race had to be re-rowed, Oxford going down by 12 lengths. But that was before I got to Oxford at all. I remember discussing American black rights with Don Cadell after the epoch-making case of Brown v. Board of Education in 1953. Don was sympathetic to the cause of black rights but he thought the decision was ahead of its time and foresaw a great deal of trouble. Don's fears did not take place. Even if they had, the value of the decision was so seminal that it would have been worth it.

Daya Sennanayake, a contemporary law student of Pembroke, originally from Sri Lanka but at the time based in Singapore where his father run a successful jewelry business, was also with us. Daya was charming and full of fun. His father wanted him to come back to manage the family jewelry business. He did not. Unlike Dick Wilson, he wanted so much to be a lawyer. But after his degree, he did not go on to read for the Bar which he had wanted to do, but was sent off to Belgium to read gemology. He did not do well in the jewelry business when he got back home. He was shunted off by his father into shipping. He liked that neither. He must have given the final offence to his father when he refused to marry the former beauty queen who had been selected to be his wife. When I saw him again in 1975, he was doing some business with a Canadian company interested in paper in Kuala Lumpur. I was passing through Singapore and had written to him. He came down from KL to see me and took me to the family jewelry shop which his brother had inherited to buy a jade ring for Stella.

Apart from the few incidents that I have written about, I do not recall having unpleasant racial experiences. This may have been due to the fact that I tried to avoid the possibility of situations which might give rise to them. If, for example, I knew or had heard that other blacks had been discriminated against in certain areas or places, I took those reports on their face value and avoided those places or persons myself. When I went into digs, whether on holidays or to live in during term time, I chose places where black friends of mine had been previously made welcome, such as the house of Mrs. White in St. John's Street, where Quayson Sackey and Dua Sekyi had stayed before, or Mr. Fisher's place in Wellington Square, where Quist-Arcton had stayed, or Mr. Kynnersley's where Dua-Sekyi had moved to when I left College for digs. I remember when I wanted to get a flat of my own in my fourth year at Oxford. I went out with Stella, who did not understand or believe all the stories she heard about racial prejudice. I told her how difficult it was for black people like me to get good accommodation in Britain. Memories of London, where we had fought battles for the establishment of more Colonial hostels in 1951 must have been fresh in my mind. I had seen an advertisement of a flat in Banbury Road, beyond Summertown, where a Mrs. Clyne had asked interested persons to call. Both Stella and I got into the telephone booth at St. Giles to try Mrs. Clyne. I fully expected a rejection. Stella thought it was ridiculous. When Mrs. Clyne answered the telephone, I told her I was a student looking for a flat and had seen her advertisement, could I come to see the flat. By all means, she said. So I made what I thought was my telling point. “By the way, I am black.” Back came the answer, “I know.” I could never live that day down with Stella. Long after that she continued to laugh at my imaginations of prejudice. I took the flat.

My father died in 1953 while I was at Jesus College. It was the saddest experience I had at Oxford. He had been unwell for many years. He was diabetic and some complications had set in towards then end. The day he bade me goodbye in Accra, he said, quite unsentimentally, that he did not think that I would return to meet him. Sam and Jessie Annie, accompanying me to Takoradi to join the boat to Liverpool, were terribly upset by this statement and began to weep, asking him what he thought he was saying. But he made his little farewell speech matter-of-factedly without a tear. Nor did I cry. We had had a lovely relationship. He was always very happy to see me. We spent long periods in each other's company, some times in the Tudu house just standing by the window watching the world pass by. But on long holidays, he soon began to wonder when I would get back to my studies at school. With the exception of the time that he talked to me for not pulling my weight at Achimota, he had seldom had occasion to lecture me. I knew I could not go back home for any funeral ceremony when he died. So I bore my grief with the support of the close friends that I had at Oxford. I remember Dick Wilson sending me a charming letter when I passed my Bar finals, regretting that my father was not around to enjoy that great day with me.

I stayed up at Oxford after I had taken my degree in the autumn of 1954. I had wanted to do a BCL. But the Gold Coast Government thought it was not necessary for the work I was to be employed to do. I was quite disappointed by this decision as I had support in the College to pursue the degree and I thought it would improve my legal understanding considerably.

After my return from the conference in Paris, I moved from Wellington Square into a flat in Banbury Road, beyond Summertown. Instead of Mr. Kynnersley whom one saw daily with his wife at breakfast and when they came to make up the rooms for the landlord, I had Mrs. Clyne for a landlady. She interfered little with one's life at the house. I thought I knew my way around Oxford well enough. The logistics of getting to the library everyday were easier than if I were in London and the facilities were as good as I could find in Lincoln's Inn. So I adopted an organised life working daily in the Codrington Library of All Souls College. The failure rate at in the final Bar exams was phenomenal, so it was an exam truly feared by those who took it, especially those of us who came from the British colonies.

I took the Bar final exams in May 1955. When the results were due, I was so worried that I asked Kwame Boafo to look them up in the Times and then phone to tell me how I had done. In order not to get up and fret while waiting for the call from Boafo, I read far into the night, a practice which was unusual to me, so that I would still be sleeping when Boafo rang. I deceived myself, because I was awake early. I lay there waiting for the telephone from Boafo. At 11 am when it had still not come, I summoned up courage and crept downstairs to find a paper. I saw my landlady's Telegraph in her letter-box and snatched it. With increasing alarm and disappointment I read down the list of names of those who had passed with a third class. My name was not there. Just when I was about to fold the paper again to put it away with the sure feeling that I would have to take the exam again, my eye caught the small list of those who had obtained a second class [rather than a third class] and there was my name, fifth in the order of merit.

I was called to the English Bar by Lincon's Inn in June 1955. After that I started to find out about my return home. It appeared then that the Attorney-General's Chambers in Accra were not ready for my return. They said there were not enough seniors around the place to give me any training if I returned then. Some suggestion was put forward that I should start my career in the AG's Chambers of some Caribbean colony whose circumstances with regard to staffing were better than the Gold Coast. But no such Chambers could be found to take me. I went through a period of uncertainty not knowing when I would be returning. Some time in August, Dingle Foot, who had acquired a great reputation in the Gold Coast in 1948, representing the “Big Six” during the Watson Enquiry established by the British Government to investigate the causes of the disturbances of February that year, was asked to take me as a pupil. Dingle had become a Queen's Counsel at that time and was therefore unable to take pupils any more. He suggested to the government that I should become a pupil of Tom Kellock in his Chambers. I joined Dingle Foot's Chambers that Autumn. On the day that I started my pupillage, that is the 17th of October 1955, my appointment as an Assistant Crown Counsel in the service of the Gold Coast Government commenced.

But before all this was settled I had moved from Oxford to London. There, I stayed for a while in Kilburn, near where Roger Korsah and his wife with her Whittaker family lived. And I saw quite a bit of them. Adamu Atta had a room in the digs where I lived. During part of those holidays, his sister, Sefi, now Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of External Affairs of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, whom we continually regarded as a little girl from our Achimota days, came to stay and to cook for us. Later both Adamu and I moved to a flat in Neasden. But Adamu did not stay long. He was then reading veterinary science. After taking his exam for that year he went home for a visit to Nigeria and did not return to England for a long time after that. By the time he did return, I had left for West Africa. He then came to read law. When he did not return after his visit to Nigeria, Roger took his place in the flat.

As soon as I got my appointment, I got a letter from home asking me to write to thank various family members, including Mrs. Genevieve Easmon, for the help given in the education of my brothers, Sonny and Jack, and I assumed responsibility for their education.

Dingle's Chambers were mainly concerned with Privy Council practice. The Privy Council was still the final court of appeal for most Commonwealth and Colonial countries. Most of its judges were the Lords of Appeal in Ordinary who constituted the final court of appeal for the United Kingdom. But Judge L.M.da Silva of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) was a regular member of the Board. And other judges of the Commonwealth also sat occasionally. Members of Dingle's Chambers were briefed to represent either the appellant, in criminal cases, usually the convicted person, or the respondent, who in such cases would be the Queen or the State from which the appeal emanated. The Chambers were at 2 Paper Buildings. But the overflow, to which Tom Kellock and his pupil belonged was at Lamb Buildings. The Clerk of Chambers was Walter Butler, a wizened man of recognized skill; as well travelled as Dingle himself as he often went around to the various parts of the world where Dingle was briefed. The members of Chambers which I had most to do with, apart from Tom Kellock, were Biden Ashbrook, with whom we shared the same room, Phineas Quass, a small, clever, and tenacious Queen's Counsel who led Tom from time to time, their important case of the time being Vine v.The Dock Labour Board in the Court of Appeal. Then there was Ralph Milner, a brilliant advocate on appeal, who was somewhat radical in his views, who saw solicitors turn away from him during the period I was there because he had visited communist China. I recall an occasion when he was for the appellant before the Privy Council in a very bad murder case. Tom Kellock was for the respondent. I, of course was sitting behind Tom. We listened to Ralph spend about five minutes pointing out the bad features of his case. When he had said as much in that time as any opponent wishing to destroy his case would, he then launched into the legal technicalities on which he was relying as his grounds of appeal. It was a beautiful performance. As he went on, Tom raised his head to the ceiling and spoke in a whisper to me, “Austin, that is how it is done, that is how it is done...” It was a performance which left me with an indelible memory.

With Dingle Foot's long established connection with British colonial territories, a number of pupils passing through his Chambers came from these territories. His last pupil before becoming a QC was Shridath (Sonny) Ramphal from Guyana, who later became successively, Attorney General and Foreign Minister of his country and then went on to become the Secretary General of the Commonwealth for some fifteen years ending in 1990. Berthan Macaulay, former Attorney General of Sierra Leone had also been a pupil of the Chambers, as had Herbert Chitepo, the nationalist Southern Rhodesian (Zimbabwean) who in the days of the Rhodesian struggle became Director of Public Prosecutions of Tanzania and later a leading member of the independence struggle who was assassinated in Zambia. In my time, Basil Adedipe from the Attorney General's Chambers of Western Nigeria, subsequently to become Director of Public Prosecutions, was taken in by Chambers as a pupil of Biden Ashbrook. After me, Moleleki Mokama, Attorney General of Botswana, by 1990, probably the longest serving Attorney General in the Commonwealth, having held that post since 1967, was a pupil of Tom Kellock. And Livesey Luke, former Chief Justice of Sierra Leone, President of the Court of Appeal in The Gambia and, subsequently, Chief Justice of Botswana, was a pupil of Ralph Milner. Gyeke Dako, successively, Director of Public Prosecutions in Ghana, then in Gambia, and judge of the High Court in Botswana, also passed through the Chambers.

I remember many years later when I was passing through London and Tom invited me to dinner at his club, The Reform Club, when we were joined by Moleleki Mokama from Botswana; [xxx]~[* check missing name ]~ who was then working in Central Africa, and [xxx]~[* ? ]~ from Uganda. While having coffee and liqueurs, Lord Morris of Borthy Gest, who apparently lived at The Reform Club when he was in London, was invited by Tom to join us. One shared the pride in Tom when he introduced his former pupils now in different parts of Africa to Lord Morris.

Tom was a member of the Western Circuit and I went on Circuit once with him, when we stayed with his mother, Mrs. Nuttal, at her home in Somerset. The weekend saw me gardening, an unusual pastime for me. It was on the Western Circuit, at Dorchester, that I had my first opportunity of speaking in Court: the prosecution was over; the accused represented by Tom had been convicted and sentenced. Counsel for the prosecution, Raymond Stock, had disrobed when his attention was drawn to the fact that there were other charges, of a similar nature against the accused which had not been dealt with. It was agreed that the best way of disposing of the charges for the time being was to apply to the Court to let them lie on the file. Should Raymond Stock get back into his robes for this simple matter? Why should I not make the application? I was still in my robes. So I did. It was nothing; but it was an exciting moment.

My life as a pupil could not have been very different from most other pupils. Tom gave me the opportunity of studying his papers; doing the first draft of documents for his perusal, practically all of which found themselves in the waste paper basket; attending his conferences and discussing the work he had with him; going to court with him. But it was not all work. We had the occasional drink and we talked about life, politics, the colonial situation, mixed marriages, whatever. Tom has been a life-long liberal and, as such, had fought a parliamentary election, unsuccessfully, for the cause. Liberalism as a political force in England was already in decline. Dingle, from the great family of liberals of South West England, deserted the party while I was there and joined Labour. This was felt a great betrayal by admirers like Tom.

Although I saw all Tom's papers, there was one set which, I remember, he thought I should not see. This was the case of the Gold Coast Chamber of Mines in the Mines Enquiry held by Mr. Justice Sarkodee Adoo in 1956. He was not sure how his clients would take it. About August/September that year, he visited the Gold Coast for the enquiry. On his return, he told me that his clients would not have minded my seeing their papers. But by then, it was too late. I had more or less completed my pupillage and was getting ready to go back to the Gold Coast.

One other thing which happened that summer while he was away was that I got married to Stella, the Finnish girl I had met at Oxford. Stella went back to Finland in 1954 and, for some time, I thought we had no future together so that it was pointless entertaining any thoughts in that direction. But as I got nearer to going back home, despite the warnings and advice that I had received from home, I decided to ask her to marry me so that we could start life in the Gold Coast together. She agreed, and came back to London at the beginning of August. I was then sharing a flat with Roger Korsah in Neasden in North London. So Stella and I went straight away to the nearest Registry Office which was at Willesden to arrange for an early wedding. We saw the Registrar together and fixed a date. But he managed to see Stella alone and asked her whether she was being wise in getting married so soon after we had met. As her passport showed, Stella had not been in London for more than a week. And the Registrar thought that we had just met upon her arrival in England this time.

We got married on the 18th of August 1956. We had only a few friends there. Dick Wilson, who got to the Registry early and stood in front worrying because our time was coming up and we were nowhere to be seen. Frank (Kojo) and Iris (Naawaa) Torto, Roger, Martha, Stella's friend for whose wedding to Robin Godliman, Stella had first come to England in 1953, Johnny Quashie Idun, J.H. Mensah, Kwame Boafo and Adjei Bekoe who had hitch hiked from Oxford that morning, and Eleanor and Dick Thomas, whom Stella knew better. Alex Boyo arrived from the European continent that afternoon and joined us. It was a simple wedding but we all enjoyed it immensely.

My closest relative in London at the time was my aunt, Mrs. Genevieve Easmon, who was there with her husband, Charles, at the time. I had asked them. But they were not there. Charlie Easmon came a few days later and spent a long and pleasant evening with us. We did not see my aunt until we got to the Gold Coast on the 27th of November. I later learnt that she had a habit of registering her disapproval in such conspicuous ways.

Tom Kellock was not at the wedding because he was then in the Gold Coast. But I had not told him anything about my intentions which must have been formed before he left. That must have been because I had concluded from some earlier conversation that he was not too sympathetic towards mixed marriages. I remember him giving as an example how difficult it was for a marriage between persons of two different religions, or even between, say a Catholic and a Protestant to succeed, and how much more difficult it would be for two people of different backgrounds and cultures to make a marriage work. I told him about my new status when the new legal year started that October and I visited Chambers. It was as if I had hit with a sledge-hammer. He was visibly upset. How could I have failed to tell him that I was getting married. He brushed my argument of his dislike for mixed marriages. He immediately got in touch with Dingle and organized a party for members of Chambers for Stella and myself at El Vino's on Fleet Street. Stella was bewildered by all this.

Apart from attending to Tom's business during my pupillage, I had had the opportunity of watching some of the best advocates then at the Bar perform in court. It was a delight to watch Sir Hartley Shawcross cross swords with the leader of the Electrical Trade Union. “Khaki” Roberts conducting a society libel case drew in crowds to the court. Godfrey Les Quesne, who must have been pretty young at the time always presented a formidable figure when appearing before the Privy Council; he never took a note of what his opponent was saying but was ready to answer all his points the instant the opponent finishes. It must have been quite disconcerting to do a case against him.

Late in my pupillage year, long after my appointment as an Assistant Crown Counsel from the Gold Coast Government had taken effect, I got a puzzling letter that the Attorney General of the Gold Coast, George Patterson, would be in England shortly and expected me to appear on a specified date at the Gold Coast Students' Liaison Office to be interviewed by him for apppoinment as Assistant Crown Counsel. I duly appeared and found on the other side of the table, Mr. Patterson and Mr. Mike Ribeiro (Uncle Mike), the Students' Liaison Officer, who incidentally had been in charge of the arrangements for my pupillage on the London end. Mr. Patterson started with some routine questions about my wanting to join his office. I answered them off-handedly knowing that I was already a member of his office and, in any case, not feeling put out if he were to decide that I was not fit for his office as I thought it would free me from the obligation of serving the Gold Coast Government under any bond for the scholarship I had been given by it for training at Oxford and the English Bar. I wondered why Uncle Mike did not tell him that I was already employed by Government. Later it all came out and Patterson looked pretty sheepish. The only useful point made at that interview was that he asked me which branch of the law I liked to work in. My answer was, not the Criminal Law. To that, he said that he was afraid I would have to do quite a lot of that. In that he turned out to be right.

Stella's and my passage on the boat, “MV Accra”, was booked for the 15th November. That was organized by the Gold Coast Government. Two weeks before departure date, I had an urgent telegram saying that my wife was not entitled to passage paid by the Government and that, unless I signed an undertaking promising to refund the passage money, Stella's passage would be cancelled. I did not understand why all expatriates employed from the United Kingdom by the Gold Coast Government came to be entitled to have the passages of their wives and children paid by Government but that I, employed by that same Government to remain in the UK for a year, could not have my wife's passage paid upon relocation to the Gold Coast after that year. But time was too short to argue that case with Accra, so I signed the undertaking.

We both left for Accra on the appointed day. Naawaa was on the same boat; Kojo had preceded her before to Accra. We also had the company of some interesting Roman Catholic white fathers. As usual then, the voyage took twelve days and we stopped in Freetown on our way. There, we were invited by the Akiwumis to lunch.