1610 Society Profile - Diana Darke

Alumni bequests form a key part of support for Wadham and its academic mission. Diana Darke (Arabic Studies, 1974) explains why she decided to leave a legacy to the College and the happy circumstances – marrying a fellow alumnus – that reunited her with the College.

I was very lucky that my matriculation coincided with the first year of five men’s colleges accepting women. Of those, I chose Wadham above the others because it was the only one that described itself as ‘liberal and forward-looking’. The thought of being confined within an all-female environment filled me with horror. I was perhaps always a bit of a rebel, and was the first person from my school to get into Oxford via the ‘4th term’ route instead of the usual ‘7th’ term entry. As soon as I got my place, I left school and took my A-levels independently whilst working in a local restaurant. It meant I was able to keep a car whilst an undergraduate and afford a lot of foreign travel. Being one of the first 20 women in College was not as much fun as it sounds and, to be honest, I was far happier once I moved out and switched from German & Philosophy to Arabic, the best decision of my life. Wadham facilitated the switch.

Once I switched to Arabic, I actually had very little to do with Wadham, since all classes and tutorials were centralised at the Oriental Institute and I was no longer living in College. My career, first in government, then in the commercial world, then as a writer, took me abroad, living and working in the Middle East, and I was out of contact with Wadham for nearly 40 years. What brought me back was a fellow Wadhamite and Arabist, John McHugo, whom I met by chance at a Wadham event in the House of Lords, celebrating Michael Foot’s 75th Matriculation. We married in 2008. We had first known each other when I was 19 and he signed books out to me at the Oriental Institute where he worked as a penniless postgraduate to fund his research. Since then, as he puts it, ‘the world had revolved many times on its axis for both of us’.

The reason I decided to pledge a legacy to Wadham is because I feel I want to support the College’s efforts to widen access to students from all backgrounds. Education is such a game-changer. Your life really can be transformed if you get the chance to study a subject to a very high level, and that chance should be made readily accessible to all.

Rediscovering Wadham through John after such a long interval made me appreciate it far more than I ever had done whilst a student. I now feel immensely privileged to belong to such a community and want to do what I can to ensure its future for others to benefit from.

In today’s world so many things are changing so fast. It’s hard to stay grounded sometimes and I feel that certain exceptional institutions like Oxford University in general and Wadham in particular play a big and important role – often under-recognised maybe – in ensuring the continuity and stability we all need. As I’ve got older, I’ve come to appreciate the value of research, partly through my own work but also in scientific fields. It’s made me immensely proud that Oxford performed so exceptionally well during the pandemic in creating vaccines ahead of the rest of the world.