29 JANUARY 1954, Page 35

me unattractive. The school was progressive--not too progres- sive, say

advanced 1910—and it was co-educational. For nine- year-olds this meant that the boys in the class were far stronger than the girls,• and there was nothing we could do to stop them pulling our hair, or twisting our arms. Fortunately we were not sufficiently progressive for the boys and girls to sleep in the same corridors. And small girls are easier to each other than small boys. They don't, most of them, bully, but they have gangs to menace you, the outsider, passwords you don't know, secret giggles, and the teasing of small children centering on the twisting of names so that by the end the victim knows she has no identity left, she has ceased to exist as a person, the dream is real.