Books I read at school

Someone on Writers' Dock has started a topic about reading in school, and whether it put us off particular books. Now, ok this is half a century ago, so...

I have very little memory of the books I read at primary school - I was devouring Enid Blyton adventures and the like at that stage, although my father didn't approve. I think we may have been encouraged on an individual basis rather than reading as a class.

At High School, we did read books as a class - I remember Moonfleet, by John Faulkner, which I loved. An adventure yarn with smuggling, treachery, mystery and so on. Mysterious noises in the church vaults during morning service. A cracking yarn.

I could never resist reading on ahead, rather than following whoever was reading in class. I was always two pages or more ahead, with one finger keeping my official page..

We read Hard Times, by Charles Dickens. I wasn't so struck by that at the time.

We read at least one Shakespeare play per year - Midsummer Night's Dream, As You Like It, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth all stick in my mind. We used to take the parts and read them out.

I don't think we read Jane Austen or the Brontes in school, though I certainly read them at home.

It would have taken more than school to stop me reading as a child. Even the hour at the end of Friday afternoon didn't achieve that. That was when our revered headmistress 'taught' us Religious Studies by reading chunks of the Bible, evidently unaware that some of us eleven-year-olds were wriggling around trying not to wet ourselves.