How I Became a Reader by Peter Leyland
How I Became a Reader How I became a reader was all down to my school, the alma mater of Beatles, George Harrison and Paul McCartney, and often much maligned in my blogs. Deservedly so, I think, because if you weren't an Oxbridge candidate it didn't have a great deal to recommend itself, especially to the also-rans, with whom I must confess I belonged from the very first day when, black and green peaked cap in hand, I had stood abashed before its austere and forbidding iron gates. There were, however, some good teachers: among them Mr Toobe, whose head and neck poked between the lapels of his dusty black gown, and who was appropriately nicknamed ‘turtle’ as he stepped slowly along the school corridors, holding those lapels apart as if they were the opening curtains to some play. And this was a p...