I was born on 23rd Dec. 1947 in Shanklin, Isle of Wight, England to Marjorie and Dennis Cooper. I was there until I was five when we spent at year in Carnduff, Saskatchewan, Canada. The idea was that my father, a teacher, would teach his way round the world, but the adventure finished after a year when we returned to England, first in Manchester (my mother's hometown) for a year and then to Bognor Regis in West Sussex. There I attended the local grammar school which, when I joined, was just in its second year and therefore only had two years of students. It was a formative experience to attend a school in which one was among the senior students from the beginning. We got to do everything from the start: act in the plays, sing in the choir, play in the orchestra and also play a role in the formation and organization of the school. Looking back, I think already from the age of 11 I got a taste of what was involved in creating a good collegial working environment. This was the late fifties and early sixties and it felt like new and revolutionary ideas that students should be listened to and could contribute to building the school. And I benifited a great deal from the kind of individual attention you get from teachers who only have a small number of students to deal with. Unfortunately, a few years after I left, Bognor Regis Grammar School was folded into a comprehensive school together with the nearby secondary modern school and our headmaster was moved to another school in another town. The optimism and idealism that had gone into the formation of the grammar school was wasted in the end -- except for the lasting influence that it had on those of us who had been lucky enough to be there at just the right time.