Looking back, you see yourself coming forward, writes Philip Hoare. My school, St Mary’s College, was romantically set on a hill in a Southampton suburb. It was run by the De La Mennais Brothers: their “White House” dated back to the eighteenth century; Jane Austen had visited there. Now a modern extension housed we boys, who liked to believe stories of tunnels that ran all the way to Southampton Water.

I was not a well-behaved pupil. It was the early 1970s, and there were too many distractions, in the shape of Ziggy Stardust and Roxy Music. But just as Bowie was my alternative education, so I owed at least part of my discovery of literature to Mr Newton. Michael Newton – it is a mark of the educational hierarchies that I never knew his full name until five minutes ago when the magic of Google produced a school magazine from 1971 – was a willowy English master who lived alone with his cat. He had a vaguely harassed air about him; understandably, given that those of his charges who would not have preferred to be on the football pitch were dreaming of alien star men with flaming red hair.