• WHAT I’M CALLED: Alice Prochaska (pronounced pro-harska).
  • MY AGE: In my sixties.
  • WHAT I DO: I am principal of Somerville College, Oxford. This means I am responsible for running a college of some 750 students (undergraduates and postgraduates) and 200 academics and administrative staff, which is an integral part of the University of Oxford. It is the college of Margaret Thatcher and her Nobel Prize-winning tutor Dorothy Hodgkin, Indira Gandhi, Shirley Williams, Dorothy L. Sayers, Iris Murdoch and a whole list of illustrious names.
  • WHERE I LIVE: In the principal’s house in the college.
  • WHO I LOVE: My family: husband Frank, daughter and son Elizabeth and William and their partners Duncan and Juli, and my two-and-a- half-year-old granddaughter Eva. Quite a few other friends and members of my family, too.
  • HAPPIEST YEAR: Too many to choose. I could go back to my first year at Somerville College as an undergraduate, or the years my children were born, 1980 and 1982.
  • DARKEST MOMENT: Personally, the deaths of my father, 1983, and mother, 2000. But I was just settling in to a new job as university librarian at Yale University in Connecticut, USA, when 9/11 struck. The bombing of the twin towers was a profoundly dark moment for all. Most immediately, we worried about family and friends who might have died; then came the long period of reaction and the dreadful political darkness that followed.
  • PROUDEST BOAST: My current job. I am so lucky to be principal of Somerville, my own old college and a place I have always loved.
  • BIGGEST REGRET: Not writing more books. I’ve always had administrative jobs which take up all my time, but I trained as a historian and work with historians, and I would love to research and write more in my own right. Maybe when I retire.
  • WORST WEAKNESS: Eating too much.
  • LESSON LEARNT: I keep re-learning that I have to be more careful and think about what I say.
  • DULLEST JOB: It would be undiplomatic to answer that.
  • GREATEST SHAME: I can’t really come up with one; perhaps I have suppressed them, and I’m sure there are childhood memories.
  • LIFE-LONG HERO: I’ve always been a huge admirer of Shirley Williams, and getting to know her just a little recently, as an alumna of my college, has not been a disappointment. She is both idealistic and realistic in her politics, and has achieved so much.
  • OLDEST FRIEND: Tough to choose. Let’s say Nicky and Tessa, friends from my undergraduate years.
  • WIDEST SMILE: The music of Bach: the most sublime sound in the world.
  • FAVOURITE DREAM: I never remember my dreams; I wish I did. One of my daydreams is that when I retire (which I am in no hurry to do) I will find myself living in a beautiful house with a lovely garden, close to lovely friends. In that dream it’s always sunny and there’s lots going on, with music, opera and theatre, and great art galleries within reach.