Back in September we decided to put Worth School in Sussex on the cover of our education supplement. A first. Not long after, I was invited by the school’s headmaster, Stuart McPherson, to address the entire school and staff at their weekly Monday morning assembly. My talk was in the first week in December and took place in a modern chapel which seats 640 pupils plus staff.
Having recently rewatched John Cleese in Clockwise as the hapless teacher whose first address at the headmasters’ conference turns into a road-trip disaster after he gets waylaid en route, I took the precaution of spending the night at the Norfolk Arms in Arundel, around 40 minutes away. There I enjoyed a dinner hosted by the Herald’s own recipe columnist, Tessa Balfour. I noted that the book on the desk in my hotel bedroom was a paperback of A Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan. Indeed. What had I learnt along the way since I left Downside in the mid-1980s?
