The essay provides a bird’s eye view of Luigi Meneghello’s social and intellectual life at the University of Reading in the early Sixties. It includes his wife Katia’s great contribution as well as those of his main colleagues along with their notable achievements. It describes the profound sense of openness in university life of those days, the exciting international milieu and the privilege given to for humane learning. Meneghello’s attitude to other arts and to contemporary cinema is explored, along with his delight in mixing several registers, languages, dialects and genres in his writings – “an amalgam of opposites” – often with comic intentions and results. Possible contemporary English and American influences on his prose and intellectual posture are discussed, with reflective humour a guiding concern, rather new in the Italian post-war literature.