Promotion prospects
Just before morning chapel the Warden took me aside on the terrace and after laying before me the perplexities of S. Columba’s, asked whether, suppose he could spare me here, I would undertake the office of Warden in place of Williams. I said such a thought could only have occurred to persons who knew but little of me and could not possibly understand, as I do myself, my own thorough incompetence for such a post.

William Wood’s Diary 1855-1861, ed. by Mark Spurrell, is available from Oxfordshire Record Society. These excerpts are presented to give a flavour of life at Radley in the 1850s