For someone of my interests and temperament, it is hard to imagine a better education than the one I received at Lancing. Although my father was a keen cinemagoer, only too happy to take me to see whatever film might have caught my fancy, my family knew next to nothing about the theatre: and it was from Lancing that I was taken to see the new National Theatre productions at Chichester (Olivier and Redgrave in Uncle Vanya) or the RSC’s work in London (Paul Scofield as King Lear), the latter sparking in me a quite unexpected desire to spend my life working in the theatre. 

Added to this was the skill possessed by certain teachers, to identify and then encourage the enthusiasms and potential talents of their pupils. It was my French teacher, Harry Guest, himself a brilliant translator and notable poet and novelist, who read the first fifty pages of a novel I had started and insisted that I finish it, if only, as it were, to get my eye in. I had one of the most important conversations of my life with Harry, during which he persuaded me to consider reading, at university, not English, as I had intended, but French and German; this would enable me, he explained, to gain access to two new languages and literatures, rather than merely reading the sort of book I would probably get round to sooner or later on my own. 

A cursory glance at my career will reveal the seminal accuracy of Harry’s advice: from Total Eclipse, my play (and film) about Rimbaud and Verlaine, through the play and film adapted from Laclos’ Les Liaisons Dangereuses, to my more recent translations of Yasmina Reza (Art) and Florian Zeller (The Father), so much of my best work has its origins in that single conversation. I’ve no doubt others’ lives were similarly impacted; and, like me, I’m sure they’ll always be grateful to Lancing.