After national service Ascherson went up to Cambridge to read history. His tutor was Eric Hobsbawm, who says his opening remark to Ascherson was: "'How does it feel to have won your medals in a colonial war?' But we've remained friends ever since." Hobsbawm describes Ascherson as "perhaps the most brilliant student I ever had. I didn't really teach him much, I just let him get on with it."

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"Ascherson was awarded a triple-starred first but declined offers to become an academic saying that he wanted to see the world, although by then he had already turned down one invitation to travel. "Which was just as well," he now recalls. "It would have been a one-way ticket to the gallows." While at Cambridge he had been approached by the intelligence services..."