Dame Carol Black: If I Had to Start Again

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I would love to have sung professionally. I had my voice trained when I was a teenager, and now I often go to the opera and wonder what might have been. My family all worked in the factories and warehouses around Leicestershire and had never sent anyone to university, so when I started my history degree at Bristol it was important for me to hold on to my place. I realised in my second year that I wanted to go into medicine, but there was no-one to go along to and say: 'I've made a mistake.' I had to get a degree, even if it wasn't the one I wanted.

After history I studied social studies and then, fearing I couldn't get into medical school, decided to wander round the world, …