On the night before my 11-plus I had a nightmare. I was running and then I was falling, and I could not get a grip to stop myself plunging into the dark place below.

I woke up and ran from my room to Granny. The pee of terror wet my pyjamas. I was crying and shaking, a boy of five again, with my old screams of loneliness and breakdown beginning to return.

Granny put on her gas fire, made cocoa and toasted some crumpets. I told her about the nightmare and about how I couldn’t pass the 11-plus.

“Humph! Not pass? Who said you wouldn’t pass?” “Ma . . . and everybody.”

“That’s stuff and nonsense.”

Afterwards, I went back to bed and was woken by Granny’s bony hand on my shoulder.

“Time to get up. Get washed and dressed, then come and see me. I intend to talk to you.”

When we got to school that morning we had to sit at shiny desks in the gym for the maths examination. Ringing in my ears were Granny’s words: “You’ve got brains in your head which you need to use today . . . forget everything that has ever been said about what you can and can’t do.”

It was the first time I enjoyed maths inside a school building. I finished the paper early and that included checking it through like Granny had said.

Next day was English. When time was up I couldn’t believe I had written so neatly, or found so many words that came out right.

On the day the results came Ma looked surprised. “Goodness me,” she said, “you passed.”

In my first week at grammar school, at the start of our first French lesson, our chattering died away as the teacher came in: Mr Job. Behind him loomed the shadow of Captain Flax.

Captain Leonard Flax MC DSO was a deputy headmaster. Among the boys, the belief that his wartime duties included the interrogation and torture of German prisoners gave him a terrifying aura.