I arrived at Winchester — a school with which my family had no previous connection — in January 1965. In those days most pupils started in September but there was a small intake each January. 

The Headmaster when I started was Desmond Lee, who seemed to a 13-year-old rather remote and austere. The Headmaster when I left was John Thorn, who was neither. One of the first things we learnt about him was that his wife was an accomplished jazz pianist.

This was reckoned a promising sign. While I was in the school, the social and cultural upheavals of the 1960s did not make running a boarding school easy. The outside world was telling the young to stop listening to their elders and to kick over the traces. On the whole, Winchester weathered this storm of change better than most schools I heard about. I recall endless rows over rules of dress and, in particular, about the length of our hair. In the circumstances, keeping the focus on teaching people to think cannot have been easy.