Matthew Parris
From the late Alan Lomberg, my English teacher at my school in Swaziland, in my school report: ‘I’m sure I have only slightly less high an opinion of Matthew’s literary abilities than he has himself.’
Sebastian Shakespeare
The late Alan Clark once described me in his diaries as a ‘tricky little prick’, but he was beaten to the punch decades before by a teacher who dubbed me a ‘giant prick’. To this day I’m not sure which is the greater compliment or insult.
Quentin Letts
The word that appeared in my school reports time and again was ‘facetious’. Facetious is a fine word, not least because it presents all five vowels in alphabetical order, but would a teacher nowadays dare use it of a pupil? I was an annoying child.
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