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Understood what the struggle was about. My mother. Couldn't read or write, but she had more sense than many a graduate from Harvard.

Harvard was the most intimidating experience. I felt so out of my league there.

Four years was enough of Harvard. I still had a lot to learn, but had been given the liberating notion that now I could teach myself.

One thing that used to worry me is the fact that it seemed like Harvard was this big scary thing where I would have to spend all my time studying just to get in. But getting to go to both campuses of Harvard and Oxford and getting to meet some of the professors was absolutely amazing.

My background is economics and maths. I think one of the reasons I studied humanities at all, or even went into journalism, is because, like, science and maths wasn't cool in England when I was growing up. No one ever talked to the engineering students at Oxford.

The first years of my life in the U.S. were very difficult.

I did get a very fine education, and not just in science. It took some pressure on the part of my elders to convince me that I really should take an interest in humanities.

I just thought Harvard sounded great. So let's see if I get in. I didn't really have a big back-up plan.

I went into Harvard one way and came out a different person... It's the air at Harvard; it's like a Renaissance court.

As a financial historian, I was quite isolated in Oxford - British historians are supposed to write about kings - so the quality of intellectual life in my field is much higher at Harvard. The students work harder there.