It's 42 years since I left school and I have to admit that my memories of that period are dimming. Apart from a brief three months at the local diocesan seminary, St Colman's College, when I thought I wanted to be a priest, my schooldays were spent with the Abbey Christian Brothers in Newry, Co Down. I quite liked school but would have preferred to be better at sports than I was. I played Gaelic in school and cricket outside. I've only recently realised that growing up in the radio era as I did, I played cricket without ever having seen a match. We knew all about the field placings and how to play from radio.

I was involved, too, in the Abbey Suporter, a school broadsheet which supported the football team. We also included the odd unflattering reference to our teachers. They pretended they disapproved, but I think they rather enjoyed it. Not being mentioned was worse than being mentioned. I was probably fairly indolent at school and didn't find things difficult. I finished up with four A levels - Latin, history, maths and Irish - better than I expected - and a state exhibition. It was worth £80, which was a significant amount in 1957.

My father, who had a public house, wanted me to go into the business or do something useful like accountancy. So I went up to Queen's University, Belfast, and took three subjects in first year - history, Latin and maths, and then decided on honours history. It was something I did without thinking about. There was very little career guidance, fewer courses and fewer people going to university at that time.

Very early on at Queen's I met Seamus Deane and Seamus Heaney outside the Catholic chaplaincy. It was a place to which Catholics gravitated. They were from Derry and I was from Newry and we all felt Belfast a somewhat alien and Protestant environment.

Subsequently, though, I realised the great benefit of Queen's - Catholics and Protestants mixing together for the first time. There were Catholic-Protestant tensions of course, but there was also a good deal of discourse across the divide, more so then, I think, than now.

Most of our teachers were from Britain. That made them different, yet interesting. There were, though, some cultural problems. They'd address us by our surnames, something that was common in English public schools, but in Ireland was almost insulting.

Jack Gray was the teacher who most influenced my life. He encouraged my interest in medieval history and my PhD in English ecclesiastical history.

When I graduated, my father's attitude was, "Good now you can do accountancy or something useful and go and run the pub". He was a father of the old-fashioned kind. He would never praise you to your face, but would boast about you to other people. That wasn't unusual in those days.

In the event, I opted for the academic life and have never regretted it. In those days, going into academia was regarded as a privilege. It wasn't particularly well-paid, but probably better than it is now.