Did Michael Want to be a Historian?

[Dani1923]

I had been wondering why Michael decided to study Classics instead of art at Oxford. Then I read this postcard from the database that Michael sent to his Oxford tutor Robin Dundas on 18 December 1920. I wasn’t able to read the whole thing, I couldn’t make out what Michael wrote at the top of the card, but luckily I could make out most of the rest:

“…requires contrast I believe.
Also it’s about time I burst this philosophic bubble of mine; not that I shall even be encouraged as a historian; but were I the courageous dilettante of ambition— Oxford levelled to the marshes— I should still be reading Thucydides; and Plato— not much.”

So does this mean that Michael planned on having a career of being a historian focusing on Grecian history?

Another example I want to share that shows that Michael did seem to like the subject, this is from the last letter he wrote to Dundas on 10 April 1921:

“Fatal mistake to join the army, but have done so for three months and there seems no reason they will let me away only tho' its a preposterous state of affairs and I would sooner be reading Greek theology, by a long chalk. It's stopped me working and driven everything Grecian out of my head. I hope to goodness I’ll get away.”