VETERAN Labour Party politician Tony Benn brought his trademark pipe to Oxford as he gave a talk on the state of politics.

The 84-year-old former Cabinet minister spoke to a packed audience at Magdalen College School last Thursday.

Sophie Langdale, the school’s registrar, said: “He’s obviously known for his strong socialist views but he said he had changed and softened as he had got older and said he wanted to be remembered as someone who encouraged people. He wanted to guide the next generations through the hurly-burly of politics.”

Mr Benn studied philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford University and is a past president of the Oxford Union.

In 1949 he proposed to his wife-to-be, Caroline Middleton DeCamp, on a park bench in the city, which he later bought the bench from Oxford City Council to put it in the garden of the family home in London.