Frankly, I wasn’t a great success at school — although I like to think it was more a case of peaking at prep school, where I was captain of football, a prefect and even managed to pass Common Entrance, thank you very much. And then it all went downhill.
No excuses (plenty actually), but one reason for failing to dazzle at Eton was because my classical tutor cast such a long, dark shadow over me that by the age of 16 all my energies went into disliking him as much as he clearly disliked me.

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