Few of us, I imagine, would wish to be interviewed in front of an audience – even less so if it involved presenting solutions to a complex physics problem or decoding a tricky unseen poem. But the willingness of two student volunteers from University College Oxford to face such a challenge as part of this week’s demonstration interview event enabled Oxbridge candidates from The Abbey and from our local schools and colleges to see first-hand how this guided intellectual stretch works.

What I loved was how, in the many questions asked and in the animated conversations which followed, students of all disciplines were visibly enjoying the ‘puzzle’ of the equation, the ‘riddle’ of the poem – and the chance to inch up on new understanding by trial and error. Far from being a simple test of existing knowledge, joy was to be found in exploring what we didn’t know.