interview
Island Life - April/May 2010
PHOTO:
Anthony
(far right
standing and
Julian Pettifer
middle)
in school
production
of Charley's
Aunt.
Charley in Charley’s Aunt, I thought I was
to know what was going on in a command
better than him!” says Anthony.
communist country – Russia – and a satellite
Cambridge University, he says, was the start of
communist country – I chose Poland. Britain
everything. “I got a scholarship to study history,
was a satellite capitalist system, and the USA
but when I got there I moved to economics
was the command capitalist country. So I set my
and politics. I had a lot of fun there in many
targets on visiting the three countries I didn’t
things, particularly sailing and squash,” he says.
know.”
He played the world champion squash player
He approached his (left-leaning) tutor
Azam Khan several times, but decided “unless
Professor Joan Robinson about visiting Russia
I was going to spend 15 hours a day practising
and she said she could access funding from
I wasn’t going to get much better than being
the college on two conditions: that he read
captain of college squash and playing for the
a book by Paul Samuelson, a sophisticated
county. So that was an end of it.”
defence of capitalism, and join a seminar on
‘We had to camp outside at
Petershof, Peter the Great’s
palace, and on the wet grass
the girl danced, without any
music, the Dy