Whereas my mother spat blood at the very idea of exams, my father (RIP) regarded them as a necessary evil. Both felt they were liable to be an empty ritual resulting in humiliation, and both agreed that what mattered was to encourage the playfulness which enables us to feel life is to be enjoyed, not just endured.

But when push came to shove and the chips were down in the matter of stepping on the gas in the fast lane of the educational motorway - at least where I was concerned (with my three sisters it was a different matter, as they will tell you, but that's another story) - my father went to phenomenal lengths to try to get me to take exams seriously.

At Marlborough and Cambridge my father did not particularly shine. However, on graduating in medicine he suddenly became rather good at exams and managed to gain admission to the Royal College of Physicians at an unusually young age. He went on to train as a psychiatrist, child psychiatrist, and then as a child and adult psychoanalyst.

His father, the son of a shopkeeper in Northampton, had been a very successful dentist (as a child my only boast was that he had done Lawrence of Arabia's teeth). Although he earnt his crust doing the teeth of rich people, my grandfather was a bit of a scholar, specialising in physical anthropology. This definitely rubbed off on my father, who was very scholarly rather than academic and was gripped by theories and knowledge for their own sake, rather than by science per se.

In contrast to my mother, who was interested in the practical application of ideas (she helped to set up the Child Guidance movement), my father enjoyed ideas for their own sake. But they did concur in valuing self-expression, intellectual volition and beauty - all of which made me remarkably ill-suited to the straitjacket of schooling.

When I was four, my mum dropped me off for my first day. Having been 'progressively' nurtured (ie 'no' did not necessarily mean no), I was taken aback at having to sit still and listen to teachers going on about things that seemed of no importance. During my first break, I launched an unprovoked attack on two older boys and had a large chunk of hair removed for my pains. My mother decided it might be better to wait until I was five, although I fared little better when the time came.

For the next 12 years I shuddered from one academic disaster to the next. However, I never stopped reading and thinking, encouraged especially by my father. He would say, 'It doesn't matter what you read, as long as you enjoy it,' and I was strongly encouraged to value my own ideas and debate them with my parents. Passing exams was one thing; the real business of figuring out how the world works and trying to get to the authentic truth was another altogether.