At the age of 17, David Cunliffe was taken out of a small rural Canterbury community and plunged into a boarding school in a 12th-century Welsh castle.
After winning a scholarship, Cunliffe left his family and the Anglican vicarage he had grown up in to attend Atlantic College in Wales, one of 18 colleges around the world that are part of the United World College (UWC) group. It was an experience that