Sir – Chris Koening is right on the money when he decries the absurd difficulty and cost of gaining access to many university and college premises nowadays.

As someone who has spent almost 60 years living in Oxford, quite a few of them working for the university, I am old enough to remember when things were different.

My personal nadir was when the sentry guarding Worcester College, where my father was steward for several decades, refused to allow me to show a visiting family member the site of my father’s old office. Our incursion would have lasted all of two minutes!

By chance, I am currently reading the Oxfordshire volume of Arthur Mee’s The King’s England, 1949 edition. The section on ‘Colleges and Halls of Oxford University’ begins with these words: ‘Let us visit the colleges one by one, as we may freely do in the happy days of peace. Never was a nobler spectacle open to all who come.’

Not any more, it ain’t.

Dan Tarzey, Sandford-on-Thames