"Some of the masters at that time were quite useless, one in particular - RM Cocks did no more than read from a text book!!!!!"

He was lucky to get the chance to read it. At Colchester RGS we had a teacher who tried to do the same. But he had a stammer. One of our number, having worked out what book he had copied all his notes from verbatim, borrowed the book from the library, had it open on his knees, and called out the next word whenever he got stuck.