Andrea: First, can you tell me how it is that you came to be a sociologist?

Anthony: Partly by accident. I studied classics first of all in Cambridge and quite enjoyed classics but wanted to engage a bit more with the contemporary world. Then I switched to economics, partly because I wasn’t allowed to switch to psychology because I didn’t have enough natural sciences for the Cambridge psychology degree. I moved to economics hoping it would be about understanding the real world and I discovered that it wasn’t really; it was all about abstract models. It also required a great deal of mathematics, which I didn’t have – my maths simply wasn’t good enough compared with the really professional economists. At that time, one of the lecturers was John Goldthorpe and he taught a couple of sociology papers as part of the economics degree. John Goldthorpe, David Lockwood and Philip Abrams were all at Cambridge at that time in the economics faculty and although it was primarily an economics degree, they gave various lectures on different aspects of sociology.

I then realised that sociology, at least in the way John Goldthorpe taught it, was concerned with the real world and that sociology had something interesting to say. I didn’t know anything about sociology until I went to these lectures. I thought, “Well actually, I can do this” because it didn’t require advanced mathematics and it was what I was looking for, so I more or less stayed a sociologist from then on.

Andrea: Was there something in particular that you were really interested in from the perspective of the real world?

Anthony: Yes, I had one particular interest. At the time, between leaving school and going to university, I worked as a supply teacher in a northern secondary modern school and that was a bit of an eye opener. I also joined a running club up in the North East, where many of the other athletes were miners from the local pits and my regular training partners both worked down the pit.

I realised, in a way I hadn’t before, that there were huge social inequalities in Britain and that the working class weren’t the frightening people that my rather nice middle-class background had led me to suppose, but they were sharp and intelligent and certainly just as good (or often better) athletes than I was.