 Collingwood is often referred to as a British idealist, but his allegiance to idealism was in large measure a response to the Oxford realism he had imbibed as a student and continued to profess until around 1916. Hence he tended to be rather wary of the label “idealist”, and in his correspondence with Gilbert Ryle he explicitly rejected it (EPM 2005: 256). However, in his lectures on Central Problems of Metaphysics (1935) he tentatively propounded a form of what he termed “objective idealism.” But, nonetheless, as in his response to Ryle, he continued to rail against those who sought to pin his position down to an “ism”, once remarking that "I am not going to be pigeon-holed into one of your neat categories. Philosophy is a process of inquiry, not dogmatic positions" (Hector 2000).