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NATIONAL LIFE STORIES AN ORAL HISTORY OF BRITISH SCIENCE Professor Andy Hopper Interviewed by Thomas Lean C1379/10 This interview and transcript is accessible via http://sounds.bl.uk . © The British Library Board. Please refer to the Oral History curators at the British Library prior to any publication or broadcast from this document. Oral History The British Library 96 Euston Road London NW1 2DB United Kingdom +44 (0)20 7412 7404 [email protected] Every effort is made to ensure the accuracy of this transcript, however no transcript is an exact translation of the spoken word, and this document is intended to be a guide to the original recording, not replace it. Should you find any errors please inform the Oral History curators. The British Library National Life Stories Interview Summary Sheet Title Page Ref no: C1379/10 Collection title: An Oral History of British Science Interviewee’s surname: Hopper Title: Professor Interviewee’s forename: Andy Sex: Male Occupation: Professor of Computer Date and place of birth: Warsaw, Poland, 1953 Technology at the University of Cambridge; co-founder of Acorn Mother’s occupation: Father’s occupation: Dates of recording, Compact flash cards used, tracks (from – to): 17 th February 2010, 22 nd March 2010; 3 rd June 2010; 17 th September 2010; Location of interview: Cambridge Name of interviewer: Thomas Lean Type of recorder: Marantz PMD661 on compact flash Recording format : WAV 24 bit 48 kHz Total no. of tracks 7 Mono or stereo: Stereo Total Duration: 08:47:19 (HH:MM:SS) Additional material: Copyright/Clearance: © The British Library Board. No access restrictions. Interviewer’s comments: © The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Andy Hopper Page 1 C1379/10 Track 1 [Track 1] Right, yeah, off you go, yup. Right, that seems to be recording OK. Right, this is an interview with Andy Hopper carried out at Cambridge on February the 17 th 2010. Andy, I’d like to begin this some sort of background detail about you and your family life. Where were you born and when? So I was born in downtown Warsaw in Poland in 1953, and I was brought up there until the age of ten and a half. And in January 1964 I came to the UK. And the reason I came to the UK is because my parents, my mother and my father, divorced when I was very young and my mother remarried, she married an English guy called Hopper, and so after they got married, which was, I guess, might have been ’63, something like that, just ahead of arrival, a few months ahead of our arrival here, she packed her bags with me and we came to live in London. So from the age of ten and a half, January 1964, I’ve been in the UK, and, hence, hence I’m here. But I still speak fluent Polish, and I still read Polish and all that, albeit my vocabulary has remained, not quite being a child’s but at least an old vocabulary, because I don’t spend enough time in Poland. We do go there, and, you know, I’ve gone there over the years, but, to keep it absolutely up to date. Thank you very much. [01:58] Do you have any memories of your childhood in Poland? I have some memories. So, they’re partially memories, partially because you go back there, and so it sort of fuels it. So my memories are of my mother, hardly anything of my real father, and, quite strong memories of my grandparents. And, the sort of physical circumstances from when I went to school age seven in Poland, you used, I think it’s still the case, you go at age seven, and so, you know, I have, my mother was working so I guess I spent some time with my grandparents, and I remember the little © The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Andy Hopper Page 2 C1379/10 Track 1 flat that we lived in Warsaw, my mother lived in Warsaw, which was round the corner from where her parents, my grandparents, lived, and my school was just round the corner as well, School No. 85. And, so my recollection is of going back and forth between these addresses. They’re quite small flats, but it’s still very family-oriented, so, you know, I would spend time with my grandparents while, I guess while my mother was working, then back in our little flat with her, and that sort of stuff. So that’s one. And then school, and a little bit about school and class and teacher and so on, just very vague but there’s something physical. I have a very very very strong, possibly unusually strong, visual memory, and also geographic memory. So. The... Yes. Google street map in Google Earth, that’s me, right, before, before even that existed, I’d got it my head. So I can key into all these things very well from that point. So it’s not so much the touchy-feely memory, was I happy, unhappy? I pretty much, I have no idea. But if you say, do I remember the physical circumstances, where was it, what did it look like, how far was it from somewhere else, where we might have gone, that, that is my index into that more distant... well to everything actually, which includes the longer-term stuff. [04:45] OK, well, in that case then, can I ask a quick couple of follow-up questions on this. Could you describe your first home then? Yeah, because, that’s very straightforward. So, we lived in a faculty accommodation for what is now called, I think the Warsaw Business School, but at that time was called the School of Planning and Statistics. So this was a university, it’s like London Business School, except it was the School of Planning and Statistics, and there were some faculty blocks of flats on campus, or on the, on the patch, and so, built after the war, one of these sort of, slightly better, not too high rise but sort of four-storey, three- storey, no three-storey, blocks of flats, which, we could have a look at Google Earth and they’re still there. And so this was a one-bedroom little apartment on the third floor, which was right there. And, there was a kindergarten downstairs, I think it was the, I can’t remember now whether it was kind of the academic kindergarten or, for academics. And, yes, I mean it was painted pink at one stage, and they paint these things, they don’t leave them just as concrete. And, just a very simple, about eight flats on each floor, corridor on the outside. And you get some of these in south © The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Andy Hopper Page 3 C1379/10 Track 1 London, or wherever. But fine. The ground floor was the kindergarten, and the garden was the kindergarten’s garden. And so then, to one... so behind were the other flats, and way beyond that, well I’ll come back to that. Anyway, so, I mean we’re talking 200 yards by 300 yards, wasn’t a huge area. The main university building to one side with a kind of a roof above the main lecture hall which was a big lecture hall. And then, to the other side, I didn’t realise it at the time, was military, but it’s actually the chief of staff or whatever, the main military place. And behind it where I used to play was the firing range, just like on Barton Road here, that sort of idea. Now it’s all got apartments and stuff, streets, but at that time... And in front was a prison, and as it turns out, that was the worst prison in Warsaw, and that’s where they did all sorts of nasty things, and I can remember seeing it but I never knew that at the time, they wouldn’t tell, it was inappropriate to tell a kid that. Mm. And in fact I was looking at it the other day for some reason, and it’s, you know, during the war they killed... This whole area was during the war the, where the Germans lived, so it wasn’t too destroyed during the war, or during the Uprising, but nevertheless it had this prison and you know, them, and then the communists afterwards killed lots of people there. So it’s a pretty nasty prison just directly, you could see, there’s the block of flats, the garden which, kindergarten, the street and, right there was the entrance. So you had no idea what happened there as a child? I had no idea, no no no. Now I kind of, and again, you look at this stuff and you think, my God! this is a bit rough. But, it is the main one, right? [08:30] Mhm. Did you have any technologies in the home? Well I remember the first television turning up, so that was good. I mean, my memory you see really is focused on my stepfather, William Hopper, William, he’s dead now. So he was a, of Northern Irish extraction, but he was born, as I recall, in © The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Andy Hopper Page 4 C1379/10 Track 1 England, in Hornchurch or something like that, and he was a businessman, he was a trader and he was trading fruit and veg.

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