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After 72 years, I was very surprised to see myself in a photograph of Nottingham’s 1954 Industrial Economics graduates.

I am second from the right, next to Derek Willingham, with whom I shared digs in Beeston. Seeing the photograph brought back a lot of memories, not least the realisation that we were the very first cohort to study Industrial Economics at Nottingham.

I don’t think the penny ever dropped at the time. We should have been aware that there wasn’t anybody ahead of us, but I don’t think I ever thought: good heavens, we’re the first.

In fact, I had originally applied to study economics. During the interview, it became apparent that it wasn’t really what I wanted. I was much more interested in business itself and how organisations worked.

Somebody said: “There’s this other thing called Industrial Economics. It’s got all these ingredients. Might that be of interest?”

I said: “Oh my goodness, yes. That sounds much better.”

The university was very different then. The campus was much smaller and the Industrial Economics Department was based in what we called the cow sheds, temporary buildings behind what is now the Portland Building.

My future wife, Sheila, was also at Nottingham, studying Mathematics. We met through the Mountaineering Society and later helped start a Scouts and Guides Club with the support of Don Varley, one of my lecturers and a key figure in the history of the Industrial Economics department. Sheila lived in Florence Nightingale Hall and knew Don and his wife Joan well enough to babysit for them.

Don Varley and his wife Joan (second from right), me and my wife Sheila (left), and fellow IndEcon student Derek Willingham and his wife Pat (right)

After graduating, I spent three years in the Army and then five years with the National Coal Board. I trained underground at Bestwood Colliery and worked in coalfields around the country. For a while, I thought that would be my job for life.

Then I saw an advert from Ford Motor Company. They were looking for people to tackle the kind of managerial and organisational problems I had already been dealing with in coal, and it seemed a good opportunity to put my Industrial Economics degree to use.

I joined Ford and stayed for 30 years, where I held a variety of senior management positions across Britain and Europe. I was involved in a period of enormous change, including the creation of Ford of Europe in 1967, and spent time in Germany helping restructure a European operation of around 120,000 people. Eventually I became a senior staff manager at Ford Britain.

Overlaying this I spent 25 years as a Member of Employment Tribunals, eight years as an Ofsted schools inspector, 11 years as a Member of the Independent Monitoring Board of the Prison Service and many years as Chair of Governors of a couple of large secondary schools.

When I was a student in the 1950s, Industrial Economics was still largely an academic course. In later years it developed much stronger links with industry, and by then I had practical experience at Ford that I could bring back into the classroom.

The Portland Building was still under construction in the early 1950s

Don Varley encouraged me to return and I spent nearly a decade as a Guest Lecturer, giving one or two lectures a year. One I particularly remember was on the opportunities and problems of running a global company.

The campus had changed completely by then. Portland Building had been built, the cow sheds had disappeared and the university was a very different place.

The family connection continued much later when my granddaughter studied at Nottingham University Business School on a degree very similar in content to Industrial Economics. Her experience was rather more international than mine: she was able to study at Nottingham’s campuses in Malaysia and China, and we even flew out to China to visit her and see the campus for ourselves.

At 93, if I were giving advice to students today, I would put a lot of emphasis on practical experience and on getting a broad education beyond purely academic study. Outdoor education, too, to develop the whole mind and body.

Looking back, I don’t think I could have covered such a wide range of activities in my life without the very broad-based business education provided by Industrial Economics.