Visit to Dorset House Preparatory School

A couple of weeks ago I went back to my old prep school, Dorset House, which is in a Norman manor house nestled in the Arun valley. My childhood was spent roaming the beautiful river banks, running through the woods, with Amberley and Arundel castles not far away: a timeless landscape, pretty much as it must have been when the Normans settled there. It was naturally a powerful influence on my imagination, and my first novel, The Other Book, was certainly inspired by the location. The West Sussex County Times have written up the visit here - though the current piece erroneously states I was there in the 1980s; I was in attendance in the mid-90s. We had about two CDs - Queen's Greatest Hits and Nirvana's Nevermind.