I wondered what happened to my bully - so I called him

As antisemitism grows virulently around the world, Jonathan Margolis reflected on the persecution he suffered at school, especially from one tormentor. So he tracked him down

- Jonathan Margolis

What would it be like to meet someone who racially tormented you when you were a child? I have wondered for most of my adult life. Then, just in time for Christmas, I did just that.

I was brought up in a Jewish home in east London. We weren't much fussed about religious observance or about Israel, and once or twice at this time of year, we had a Christmas tree alongside a Chanukah menorah.

At my happy little primary school, there were a few Jewish kids, and nothing was made of it. But soon it would be.

Aged 11, I won a scholarship to a fancy school, Bancroft's, a bus ride away in a better area. It was a minor public school, with about a quarter of the boys boarders from all over London and beyond, the rest of us more local day boys.

Bancroft's was on a par with Dulwich College in south London, with whom we played rugby. So while my best-known near-contemporaries are the likes of the lawyer Lord David Pannick, Mike Lynch, the late tech billionaire, and the comedian Alan Davies (who loathed the school); over at Dulwich, their star turns are the novelist Michael Ondaatje, the comedian Richard Ayoade and the UK's probable next prime minister, Nigel Farage.

From day one at Bancroft's, I discovered something wholly new. In my little neighbourhood, being Jewish was no big deal. But transferred to this bigger school in a fancier catchment, it suddenly was. Suddenly, a small core of my schoolmates were obsessed with “Yids” and “Jew boys”.

We were only a handful, but this snarling bunch couldn't pass any of us in the corridor without rubbing their noses, putting on Fagin-like voices and muttering about Hitler having had the right idea. The amusing ruse of hissing to signify gas chambers, of which there has been much in the news recently, had not quite yet caught on.