FROM long discussions in smoke-filled rooms to colourful fancy dress parties, being a student at Oxford has changed a lot since the 1930s.

Back in 1935, the late John Kendall “Ken” Thomas joined Balliol College to start a four-year undergraduate degree in chemistry.

His family have given us an exclusive look at the hundreds of letters he sent home to his parents in Feltham, Middlesex, during his time in the city. They detail the extravagant meals, cold dormitories, strict professors, butlers and rooms filled with cigar smoke.

Mr Thomas’s letters spoke of poorly-lit bedrooms, lecturers who puffed away on cigarettes during class and men-only admission. The lives of modern students, such as 20-year-old Ben Marshall, studying biology at Balliol nearly 80 years later, are very different.

Asked to compare his current student existence with that of his early 20th century predecessor he spoke instead of fancy dress discos, “nothing special” food and double glazing. Balliol emeritus fellow John Jones, who was a fresher in 1961, is an expert on the college’s history. He said: “It is frankly so long ago that everything has changed. It is a world apart. “Balliol now admits women, has a much higher proportion of graduate students and has changed in all the ways society itself has changed.

“But the fundamental teaching in colleges would have been in some respects the same as it is now.

“It was mostly done on the basis of tutorials to one or two pupils at a time and that is still the case now. It is the way Oxford teaching is done.”

Mr Thomas went on to become a researcher and later manager at Imperial Chemical Industries. He died in 2009, aged 92.

JOHN KENDALL ‘KEN’ THOMAS, CHEMISTRY STUDENT, 1935

   Accommodation: My rooms are OK. The sitting room is large, but a little dark, and I go up five stone steps to the bedroom. This has one window, so is not brilliantly lit, but it should at least be warmer than some of those at Magdalen where half the walls seemed to be windows.

Junior Common Room: I am sorry that I didn’t complete and post this letter on Sunday, but I went on a 50-mile ride with John and Martin, came home and had some tea, then went to chapel, then dinner, followed by a stormy Junior Common Room meeting at which it was proposed, seconded and carried “that three gentlemen smoking objectionable cigars be thrown out” and it was duly done.

Dinners: The menu I will give in full for mother’s benefit:- Clear asparagus soup; Fillets of sole Normand Blanc; roast chicken and bacon; haricots verts and croquette potatoes; vanilla ice and stewed damsons; Scotch woodcock. The drinks are free, also the cigarettes for those that wanted them.

Lessons: Work progresses as usual, with Mr Baughan continuing his lectures and providing us with some amusement by squatting on the floor at a tutorial like an eastern ruler and smoking at least six cigarettes in the hour.

College pets: I have already made acquaintance with the college cat – she is a fine black one – very fat – and known apparently as Dervorguilla.

BEN MARSHALL, 20, SECOND-YEAR BIOLOGY STUDENT, 2012

  Accommodation: There is still one notorious room that does not have double glazing, but that is as cold as it gets. The rooms were done up maybe 30 years ago and are in that era but it does not make much difference, especially as the freshers spend their time in the Junior Common Room.

Junior Common Room: Pretty much everything happens in the Junior Common Room. It is the heart of the college and it is a big part of the social life. We hold fancy dress discos, with themes like back to the jungle, in the room, but we still have our stormy meetings with weird stuff being passed as well.

Dinners: We do have a couple of big meals. We get a meal as freshers and then when people sit their finals but it is not really a big part of Balliol. The food is fine but it is nothing special and we do not do fancy dinners. It is a lot more chilled out and not as ingrained as other colleges.

Lessons: The rooms are modern but old at the same time. A lot of the buildings have old stone fronts but inside it are glass sliding doors. The tutorials are normally one or two on one. That is one thing that has not changed that much.

College Pets: We had a college tortoise called Rosa Luxemburg, but she died and so did her replacement. Corpus Christi holds an annual tortoise race and we have had to enter with someone dressed as a tortoise this year and last.