DOWN WITH SKOOL!’ read my father with glee. ‘A guide to school life for tiny pupils and their parents.’ I know it was 1965, because he paused for a moment and said in a rather dreamy voice: ‘I was exactly your age [six] when I was first sent to boarding school. After I’d overcome my initial shock, I loved it.’
Which may explain why his favourite reading matter and the only books he ever read aloud to me were novels about boarding-school life: and, and Nor, as you might expect, was (although, in fairness, this might have been his idea of a joke).
