I recall plenty of poor and not-so-good as well as the good at school. This history teacher had a thing about writing titles in small caps, I seem to recall… He was also convinced that girls/women did not make good historians – apparently they can’t see the wood for the trees, or something.

Me – Sir, sir, please sir, please, does the Statute of Merton have to be indented twice?
Ayer – No, of course not, you indent it once and underline it, like Magna Carta.
Second Child – Sir, I’ve underlined Magna Carta twice. Is that correct?
Ayer – Of course it isn’t! Magna Carta and the Statute of Merton should be underlined once.
Me – Like the Constitutions of Clarendon?
Ayer – Give me strength! The Constitutions of Clarendon is main sub-heading E, so you don’t indent it at all, but underline it with a pecked line!
Etc etc

The consequence of this regime was that at the end of the year I was 29th out of 30 in history, and Mr Ayer’s comment on my report was ‘He has a long way to go if he wants to become a historian.’ My mother, bless her, loved history and was very disappointed by this result, but thought the comment remarkably silly, as did I. Mr Ayer died saving his wife in the Boxing Day Tsunami of 2004.

The other memory is of being accused by my history teacher (not Mr Ayer), in front of the whole class, of cheating in the history mock O-level. I was in danger of being barred from taking the O-level itself, but very fortunately I was able to make him look stupid (which wasn’t difficult) and prove my innocence by repeating the answers from memory there and then; I really had revised well, and got my best O-level pass in history.

History bascially meant British history, which suited me, and it was taught in a totally chronological fashion. By the time primary school was over you should have been up to speed on the Anglo-Saxons, villeins, the feudal system, strip farming and King Alfred. Then you progressed towards O-level at roughly two centuries a year, running into the buffers of the First World War about five years later. From what little I know of the present proposals, it seems as if the history I was taught was history a la Gove! Unfortunately we also had to do American history as a special subject, and I heartily disliked it, not least because it was too recent; I was firmly convinced that proper history (a) was British, and (b) had more or less ended with Queen Anne.