Complex sentence: Jones was educated at the Royal Grammar School in Guildford (now an independent school), where he was head boy in the academic year 1960--1; he read English at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, but "strayed into History".
Split into simpler sentences: Jones was educated at the Royal Grammar School in Guildford, where he was head boy in the 1960-61 academic year. He read English at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, but "strayed into history".