A descendant of Robert Clive, the military officer who established British supremacy in India, is among four students in trouble with authorities at a UK university for hanging or plucking partridges they had bagged on a day's shooting.
Johnny Windsor-Clive, a 19-year-old descended from the 18th century historical figure known as "Clive of India", feels Oxford Brookes University overreacted.
"It doesn't say anywhere in the regulations that we couldn't do it, and we weren't causing any damage to anything or anyone," he told The Daily Telegraph.
Along with fellow students Miles Pattison-Appleton, Alex Archer and James Birley, Clive had run-ins with university wardens after they hung the birds in their rooms and plucked them in a courtyard.
The first-year politics student often shoots at his cousin's estate in Shropshire, though the 17 red-legged partridges plucked by the students were shot by his friend Archer at an estate in Kent.
"They basically say you aren't allowed to bring game into the halls," said Clive, who belongs to a family of Conservative Party MPs and wants to go into politics.
The Oxford-based elite university's authorities told the students their behaviour risked upsetting other students and asked them to clean up feathers and blood from the ground.
The teenagers said they could not understand the fuss as they are used to preparing their own game birds at home.
"When the hall wardens spotted them plucking the birds they asked them to clean up the area. We have to be aware of the sensitivities of students from different backgrounds, so they have been forbidden from preparing fresh game in public spaces," a university spokesperson said.
