Victoria Hislop: ‘I was unashamedly a swot’
msn.comgrammar-school education. I was a bright girl, which I say without embarrassment because when I was at my best, I was top of the class and top in exams.
School was an amazing time for me. Each day I walked in through those gates and I loved every second. Tonbridge Grammar School for Girls was selective but had a diverse intake: girls from council estates and girls from the very wealthy villages around Sevenoaks who lived in houses with crunchy gravel drives and ponies in a stable.
Better still, they had comfortable and secure family set-ups. I wasn’t a posh girl, nor a rich one. When I was about 12 my mother got work as a waitress in a local restaurant and that labelled us because in those days most mothers didn’t work unless they had an economic need to.
It was a French restaurant in Tonbridge called À La Bonne Franquette, considered very haute cuisine at the time. TV chef Fanny Cradock used to go there with Johnnie, her ever-faithful husband – it was that kind of level.
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