This chapter begins, unusually for me, with an autobiographical anecdote that concerns my old school. Some little while ago I was invited to the annual Founder's Day, and as the invitation was insistent, I duly presented at 10 a.m. in the school hall, to find a seat with my name on it. Much of the programme was familiar, a rather uncanny sensation after so many years, but then members of the upper sixth performed a drama written by themselves, which enacted episodes from the story of the Pre- Raphaelite Brotherhood, involving John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Elizabeth Siddal, John Ruskin et al. I knew then why I had been invited. As an alumna who has written extensively about this group and their art and, being a connoisseur of dramatizations and retellings of the PRB's now near- legendary events, I enjoyed the somewhat tongue- in- cheek presentation by these stylish young women.

More followed in the speech by the head teacher. I recalled that in my day the then head was a historian and annually pulled out of the past some aspect of the school's founding – by none other than the redoubtable Frances Mary Buss, this being North London Collegiate School, and she being immortalized alongside Dorothea Beale, the formidable founder of Cheltenham Ladies College:

On this particular Founder's Day at NLCS the historical theme was art, Frances Buss's father having been an unsuccessful artist who taught drawing at her new school, opened in 1850, and through whom she had artistic acquaintances. In the school archive is the record of a visit by Millais, who happened upon a student practising the harp; and also a letter to school governor Annie Ridley from John Ruskin, in which he wrote: ‘I am much interested in what you tell me of the school and of the feelings with which it has been founded’, adding, ‘I might perhaps be able to come and see what you are doing and to hear how I could promote it.’