This was largely due to the glorious prep school, a gracious Georgian house in its own grounds about ten miles from Elmbury, where I learned to tickle trout and to read Virgil; to swim a length under water and to enjoy English history; all about catapults, and a little about Attic Greek. The poaching, the swimming, and the catapult-shooting I acquired partly by the light of nature and partly through the companionship of three other boys, Dick, Donald and Ted, who had the reputation of stopping at nothing short of murder. The Latin and Greek I learned from a man who loved the classics and knew how to teach them. One day, when I had been consistently slow at finding the verb in my Latin unseen, he sent me to the Headmaster with a note. The note was folded but conveniently unsealed. Naturally I wanted to find out what had been written about me and what was my probable fate. I hid in the lavatory and tried to read it. But the sentence was in Latin. For the first time in my life it seemed really important to construe a Latin sentence.
