His socialist mother worked long hours to keep him at Midfield Road junior school, St Paul's Cray, Kent, where he learned little except that he hated being told what to do. Authority was there to be confronted, with a brazen and sometimes disastrous daring. He challenged a fellow pupil to climb a tall tree, from where the boy fell to his death. Another pupil, with whom he was racing on improvised toboggans, was killed when he hit a tree.
