A teacher at St Ignatius College, Enfield, north London, Frank O’Keefe, first taught me a love of words and what they can do, writes Martin Donnelly. When I arrived as a nervous first -year student in September 1969, Frank O’Keefe was our form teacher for the first two years. He also taught us English and Latin. We all called him Fred for a reason I never discovered.

Fred had a drawling voice, which was seldom raised in anger but always cut through any background hum of conversation. He was precise and passionate about English literature and written English. Words like “nice”, “it”, “is”, “had”, “got”, were banned from our essays. Any colour had to be qualified. So no blue sky but “eggshell blue” sky or even “azure empyrean”, which got me a tick when I wrote it, even though I did not really know what “empyrean” was.