I have just received the Coronation Issue of the Westminster Abbey Review which includes an interview with me about the brief period when I taught maths and English at Westminster Abbey Choir School from January to July 1972 when I left to go travelling in Italy. I was astonished that anyone remembered it.

It required me to dredge up my memories of my late youth, before I went to University, when I lived for seven months on the top floor of the school in Dean’s Yard and taught the four forms into which the School was divided. My memories were partly prompted by two of my former pupils who remember it all far better than I do, including what I was like before I was bald.

There were a few memorable figures:-

The Headmaster was called Francis Tullo, a nice, very decent figure.

Latin was taught by Jack Lodge, who was said to be some sort of champion at bridge, taught some of the pupils to play bridge, and apparently showed silent films in a Film Club which the better pupils would accompany on the piano (some of them were brilliantly talented musicians).

Science was taught by Mr. Bennett, who I met not so long ago. All I could remember was that he drove a Morris Minor.

Art was taught by Allan Johnston, who was and remains a very interesting Scottish minimalist who was a student at the Royal College of Art, presumably only teaching as a way of making some pocket money. He was the first artist I ever met and introduced me to the studios of the Royal College which were still then next door to the V&A. We would have dinner together after his teaching and became friends, although I haven’t seen him in a long while.

The main thing I remember is walking the boys across Lambeth Bridge to play cricket on the lawns of Lambeth Palace. I also took them, probably as a break from their maths, to the Tate – and, although I had forgotten, also to the National Gallery. It was my first experience of the London museums and I got to know them reasonably well.

I was asked what I thought of the School. It had its eccentricities, some of them owing to the fact that the pupils were professional singers. But they were interesting. And the teaching, including mine, was possibly a bit erratic. But it was no hardship living right in the heart of Westminster next to the Abbey.