It was the late 1960s. I was a diplo-brat far from my father’s posting, boarding at the Beechwood Sacred Heart Convent School in Tunbridge Wells: not an obvious nursery of subversion and dissent, though in fact its headmistress, Sr Prudence Wilson, was a lover of argument herself, writes Libby Purves.

Teaching staff, lay and Religious, were good enough (though poor on science – some girls had to rebel and demand classes at the local boys’ grammar rather than dissect the damn dogfish one more time with Miss Longfield-Jones).

But the real inspirer, for me, was Monique Raffray. Not glamorous, probably around 50 by then, she was totally blind from birth. At first she seemed a little daunting, but she opened all the doors.