To the outside world we were a successful, happy family in the sense that there were no visible signs of dysfunction. But I was a very from about the age of 12 onwards, with quite difficult . I would do things like get up at one in the morning to check the gas was off and all the doors were locked, go back to bed, then persuade myself I hadn’t properly checked and get back up again.
This was a ritual that would go on for several hours, and as a result I didn’t get much sleep, so it was exhausting. And weirdly, because they were busy, my parents never noticed or talked to me about it. I was just left to get on with it.
My dad came from a fairly classic, not-a-lot-of-money background; his father was a pleater, pleating women’s skirts. Dad went to a state school called Hackney Downs, or the Grocers’ Company’s School as it was known because it had been founded by the Worshipful Company of Grocers. He did brilliantly there, top of the class in everything, then went to the LSE [ ] and after that Princeton [University].
It was a time of remarkable social upward mobility – of a kind we have rather lost, I would argue – but as a result he passionately believed in , as did my mum. They also felt selection at 11 was way too early, and that it was damaging to be classed as either academically bright or written off at that age, and they became leading campaigners for . So there was never any doubt that I would go to a local comprehensive, which I did: it was a school called .
