Cabinet minister, the last Governor of Hong Kong, chancellor of Oxford University and chairman of the BBC Trust – it’s a golden career. But the key to such success turns out to be a Catholic primary school in a downmarket suburb – and teachers who let their charges’ imaginations soar People who enjoyed blissfully happy childhoods, an Irish friend of mine argues, should be able to claim ­damages for deprivation of literary royalties. Contented childhoods, with loving parents and kind and warm-hearted teachers, don’t sell books. So what chance could I ever have (even if I wanted to do it) of writing financially profitable memoirs?I was brought up in the west London suburb of Greenford, the slightly downmarket end of Ealing, the self-styled queen of suburbs