How wrong those first impressions were. As I settled in life took on a whole new complexion. Dr Pritchard was in charge - a man we all respected enormously who very rarely had to wield his cane. We played sports to our hearts' content under people like Mr Windle ; there was rugby, cricket, lacrosse, tennis and swimming and we loved the dining-room victory chant when we won away fixtures; we learned to appreciate music under people like Mr McCarthy and sat above the swimming pool in Pudsey listening to Handel's Messiah ; we learned not to cough at night in the principal Findlay dormitory for fear of disturbing Mr Bolt; we learned to ballroom dance with chairs and we made Shakespeare turn in his grave with our performances of his plays. We dressed up as Vinter, Walker and Towlson for the 150th Anniversary Pageant. We filled the Chapel regularly with lusty Wesleyan singing. We smoked cigarettes under the railway bridge by the river and spent our tuck money on liquorice allsorts misshapes from the sweet shop at Apperley Bridge. We roamed the moors in our scout uniforms. We wrote a weekly letter home and now and again we focused on our academic work. Above all we learnt the difference between right and wrong and we learnt to respect other people.

The cliché is that one's schooldays are the happiest of one's life. The truth is that for me they were indeed happy days. There was something about the ethos of the school coupled with its Methodist heritage and Yorkshire location which made me feel very much part of a big family and one to which I owed intense loyalty. And you cannot help but get the sense from this book by Nigel Watson that the school's culture and values, evident then, have been taken forward so powerfully and successfully in more modern times. As it reaches a 200 year milestone it is heart-warming and not a little humbling, to see how the school has flourished in recent times under its inspired leadership.

General the Lord Walker of Aldringham GCB CMG CBE DL (1958-1963)