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crashing into the loose. He inspired the pack to greater heights than we thought possible and combined them as a unit around him. He is slightly devoid of rugger intelligence, owing possibly to his fantastic energy, and is not very good at passing. Dribbles well.
    I boxed, too, but hated it. At one time, in the annual blood match against Eton, the tournament depended on the result of the last bout in which I was pitched against Lord Valentine Charles Thynne * , the son of the 6th Marquis of Bath. Although he was four years my senior I was much the stronger. But no matter how many blows I rained on him, he refused to go down and succeeded in landing an equivalent number on me – each of us being spurred on with roars from our respective supporters in the audience. At the end of a most bloody fight, the bout was declared a draw.
    I was, however, hopeless at cricket, which I have never really seen the point of, and so during the summer took up rowing and athletics. I was not neat enough to be a good oarsman, but in athletics I found I could excel. I loved the one-on-one competitiveness and the thrill of winning. To start with I was better at field than track events, particularly the high jump and the shot put, at which I set a new school record. But later I discovered I could run fast too, and in my last year won the Victor Ludorum for the best all-round athlete in the school.
    Apart from sport, I took quite an active part in the other ‘extra-curricular’ school activities. I was an active member of the Debating Society from the age of twelve right through to my final year, arguing at various times against corporal punishment, against too much conformity, in favour of Sunday cinemas, in favour of suppressing gambling and against the abolition of fagging (in which I said that being afag helped leaders to understand what it was like to be led). I also rose through the ranks to become a Warrant Officer in the School Cadet Force. But my extracurricular agenda was beginning to extend somewhat wider than official activities. As I approached my mid-teens, adolescence and puberty came roaring tempestuously into my life.
    After the age of fourteen, we were all required to go to dancing classes. I was, and remain, a completely hopeless ballroom dancer and have, over the years, inflicted much grievous damage on members of the opposite sex unfortunate enough to be paired with me. But this was a chance to meet and actually touch those, to me, mythical creatures – girls! I was paranoid about my curly hair at the time and used to spend hours washing it an attempt (always vain) to get the frizziness out (in those pre-race-conscious days, the nickname my detractors gave me was ‘the white wog’, because my hair, though mousy blonde, was so negroid in character). I had actually had my first kiss in a hay loft on the night of the Coronation at the age of eleven, when visiting the home of my father’s favourite sister (whose house in Dorset became a kind of ‘home from home’ during half-term holidays when I could not get back to Ireland). But this had not in any way diminished the paroxysm of nervousness and confusion into which my body was plunged whenever I was required to have social contact with a member of the opposite sex. And so, despite falling deeply in love with every single one I was nominated to dance with, I was not very successful and envied the louche and easy manner of my (straight-haired) school colleagues, who always seemed to be able to make progress where my clumsy approaches had been embarrassingly rejected.
    All this changed, however, when I was just a couple of months short of my fifteenth birthday.
    Two academic subjects consistently caused me problems at school. French (all my French teachers agreed on one thing – I had absolutely no aptitude for languages) and mathematics. Lack of ability in French was not regarded as being too serious. But mathematics was a different matter. By 1955 my father was in severe