The brightest family in Britain?!

By Judith Woods

Britain’s best-educated family are staring at me in polite puzzlement. They clearly think I have gone mad. I’m inclined to agree with them, but I can’t stop myself from channelling Jeremy Paxman and barking out random questions: “What’s the collective noun for a group of ladybirds? Mozart’s K.626 is better known as which piece of music? Can you name the three naturally occurring forms of titanium dioxide?”
 

Well, can you? Ha! Not so clever now, are we? “Oh, we’re not clever at all. Our contemporaries at Oxford are all running the country, so we consider ourselves decidedly second-rate,” chortles Thomas O’Malley, 42, who studied at New College, manages pension funds by day, and is a Tory councillor in Richmond by evening.
 

“Absolutely,” chimes his sister Helen, 46, an ex-Balliol restaurateur and mother of seven. “The thing about Oxford is that you are confronted with so many brilliant minds you feel quite dim by comparison.”
 

Dim? Hardly. A Dynasty? Absolutely. Today the O’Malleys will take part in an extraordinary graduation ceremony, when all six siblings collect their degrees from Oxford University. Helen and Thomas will be joined by Mark, 47 (Magdalen), Charles, 44 (Oriel), Elizabeth, 37 (Wadham) and Edward, 33 (New College).
 

Born and brought up in Richmond, London, they all studied history except Elizabeth, who daringly read English literature. Edward, the last of the line, distinguished himself by gaining a first, but even he never got round to graduating formally.
 

At Oxford there is no single graduation ceremony at the end of a degree as is customary in most universities. Instead, graduates make their own arrangements to attend one of several such events which are held throughout the year.
 
When Mark finished his exams 25 years ago, he went travelling and then got a job and never got round to collecting his degree. Helen did the same and so it became a family tradition not to graduate, the understanding being that if, by some fluke, they all got to Oxford, they could graduate together.
 
And so now, after just such a fluke and some negotiation, New College has agreed to host this historic occasion. Their parents – Stephen, a judge who read jurisprudence at Wadham, and Frances, who worked for the historian Christopher Hibbert – will be present, along with 19 of their grandchildren, to watch their children graduate en masse.
 
They can congratulate themselves that each of their offspring has forged his or her own career path: Mark lives in Paris and is European head of marketing for an American technology firm; Charles runs a sustainability consultancy; Elizabeth is pursuing a spiritual life at the Croatian pilgrimage site of Medjugorje, where the Virgin Mary is said to appear daily; and Edward runs an investment consultancy.
 
“Our parents never placed us under any pressure to conform,” says Charles. “Personally, I think university isn’t the be-all and end-all. What really matters is emotional intelligence rather than IQ.”
 
Such magnanimity puts paid to what is without doubt the bitterest academic schism – no, not between Darwinists and Creationists, but between Oxbridge alumni and everyone else, who hates them on principle. The principle being that the Dreaming Spires invariably churn out over-privileged, Master of the Universe types.
 
This is, of course, utter tosh. Oxford graduates are no more likely to Lord Snooty it over us than anyone else. Apart from David Cameron (Brasenose). And George Osborne (Magdalen). Oh, and William Hague (Magdalen). And Theresa May (St Hugh’s). And Michael Gove (Lady Margaret Hall). There’s more, but not in a good way, so let us turn back to the O’Malleys, who are an altogether more convivial and economically productive bunch. The boys attended the Catholic equivalent of Eton, Ampleforth, as did their father and their grandfathers. The girls went to St Paul’s Girls’ School.
 
Their parents employed no early hothousing methods to propel them to a top university. No classical music was piped into the womb (and certainly not K.626: as any fule kno it is Mozart’s Requiem Mass in D Minor), there was no extra-curricular Kumon after primary school, no Sunday afternoon tutors or Sixth Form College boot camps. But, oddly, ladybirds (collective term, the unforgettably delightful “a loveliness”) did play a part.
 
“My mother did show us Ladybird flashcards when we were little,” says Helen. “Maybe that had an effect?”
 
“And there was a poster of the Kings and Queens of England on the back of the loo door,” says Thomas. “I’m appalled to see five-year-olds who live near us being given homework – at the parents’ request. Our parents never showed any interest, although when I was about eight, I pleaded with my mother for help with my fractions and she got it wrong, so I never asked her again.”
 
Other than being encouraged to read the many history books in the house – one ancestor on their father’s side was Admiral Augustus Keppel whose flagship was HMS Victory before Nelson – there was no question of a helicopter parent hovering above them monitoring their activities. It was simply understood that school was for studying and home was for playing. “There was an old-fashioned emphasis on fresh air and being in the garden for hours at a time,” says Charles, who doesn’t own a television set and whose children attend a Rudolf Steiner School. “We ate together as a family and talked, but it wasn’t about politics or history. I recall a lot of my childhood being spent building with Lego and gung-ho games with toy guns.”
 
Pretend weaponry may no longer be considered politically correct, but gung-ho, inventive children make for gung-ho, inventive adults, something that he says has been lost. “Employers say that young people lack initiative and the ability to problem-solve – that’s because they spend their childhoods glued to screens, playing computer games that may be exciting, but don’t enhance their individual creativity the way building a den does.”
 
So here we have it; living proof of the benefits of education for education’s sake. They all agree that Oxford fosters confidence, analytical skills and articulacy, even if Helen dryly observes “that’s why politicians can drone on so extensively on subjects about which they know nothing.”
 
So it’s all the more appalling then, to learn how disillusioned some of the O’Malleys have become with academe. “University is now so expensive that none of us would have made it to Oxford,” says Thomas. “Our school fees were paid by my parents selling off family antiques, and by the end of A-levels there were none left.”
 
Charles concurs: going to university shouldn’t be equated with a trip to the jobcentre. “My concern is that young people will be saddled with such debts that they will base their choice of subject solely on financial grounds and what career they are guaranteed at the end of it.”
 
Helen, whose eldest child, aged 20, has cerebral palsy, says bringing up a child with special needs has given her an insight into the way children are shoehorned into a one-size-fits-all educational system. She isn’t even sure she wants her children to go to university.
 
“It’s nice to finally pick up my degree, if only to show my children that Mummy used to have a brain, but now that you get a degree in almost anything, the achievement has been devalued. I’d be quite happy if my children chose apprenticeships instead.”
 
But this afternoon all such gloom will be cast aside for the O’Malleys, whose winning Oxford streak puts them ahead of journalist and author Stanley Johnson, whose five children, including Boris, mayor of London, went there and the disgraced newspaper publisher Robert Maxwell. Six of his nine children graduated from Oxford, although not at the same ceremony.
 
“The most important thing about today is that it has given us an opportunity to get together as a family,” says Helen. “Having lunch, catching up, laughing and enjoying each other’s company. Those are the things that really matter in life.”Telegraph