Were there any films, or books, that, in hindsight, anyone feels had a significant influence on them growing up such that they may have, in some small way, have shaped their lives?
I was a voracious reader as a child, so it's always books rather than films which have a lasting effect (the pictures are better). However the single piece of media, if I can put it that way, which had the biggest effect on my life was an episode of University Challenge back in late summer 1964.
To put this in context, I was a very bright small town grammar school girl in East Lancashire, from a very bright working-class family. Neither of my parents had had secondary education, because of poverty and family circumstances. Both had finished their elementary education in their early teens and gone straight into work, where they basically educated themselves into better jobs over the years. The struggles they had had to realise their own potential as much as they had done meant they placed a very high value on education and were hugely supportive of their family of five girls, all of whom passed the 11+ and went to the local grammar school.
My elder half-sister would have loved to go to university, but back in the mid-50s there was very little financial support available and she had to leave school and instead trained as a nurse, only managing to get her degree in her 50s thanks to the OU. I was 8 years younger, so by the time I passed my O-Levels and went into the Sixth Form, I was in the first cohort to know that there would be mandatory financial help available (means-tested of course) if I managed to get a place at university.
To my amazement a couple of my subject teachers started to encourage me to think of applying to Oxford and Cambridge, something that hadn't occurred to me in my wildest dreams. It meant doing my A-Levels, then returning for an extra term to apply and sit the Oxbridge entrance exams and that's where University Challenge finally comes in.
Back then Oxford and Cambridge didn't produce a prospectus, so it was extraordinarily difficult to know which colleges to apply to. None of the teachers at my school were Oxbridge graduates so all I could find was a list of the names and addresses of the small number of women's colleges - 5 at Oxford and 3 at Cambridge - with no other information. Then one evening, when I was doing my homework, my father came through to say University Challenge was on and one of the competitors was an Oxford women's college. I went through to watch and the women's college won that round (and indeed went on to win that series).
I took it as a sign, put that college at the top of my list of choices, plus a Cambridge one chosen at random, and sent off my applications. The rest as they say is history. I took the entrance exams and was invited to interview at both, but the die was cast as soon as I actually saw and spent the night in what became my college. It was love at first sight and I was over the moon to be offered a place. I had three happy and life-changing years there and, to cap it all, met the man I married at the end of those three years, who is still my very DH 58 years on.