John le Carré, the German master

In 1956, before he was a famous spy novelist, David Cornwell came to teach at Eton. Among his pupils was Ferdinand Mount

- David Cornwell

In my last year at school, we have a new German teacher.

The top German set are a notoriously tough bunch, and the previous incumbent retired hurt to go and teach in a girls’ school.

‘This one won’t stand any nonsense,’ my tutor prophesies.

At first sight, the new master looks quite innocuous, with a mop of corn-colored hair and a soft, hesitant, slightly insinuating voice as though he means you to read between the lines of what he is saying. But from the beginning of the first lesson, he is in control, apparently without making the slightest effort to exert authority. He switches on charm or menace at will, and when the yobs at the back start to make trouble, he delivers merciless and exact parodies of their arrogant, languid voices.

For me, David Cornwell also has the marvelous freshness of the born teacher who is teaching his subject for the first time (he is barely 25). He takes me up partly because I am quite good at German but also, I think because I look a bit down in the mouth. My mother died of cancer at the end of the summer holidays, and in typical English fashion everyone is avoiding the subject – and me, or that’s how it seems.

He invites me out to supper in his cottage at Dorney with his elfin-pretty wife, Ann, who illustrates children’s stories. She shows me some of her illustrations, which somehow seem to be rather like the cottage we are in, with their two little boys tumbling around the fireside and David (we are old enough now to call the masters by their Christian names) talking about anything that comes into his head.