Jasper: "I was very upset at boarding school [Roysse's School and also called Abingdon School in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, graduating in 1942].  I wrote to my mother to take me home, and she didn't.  She never realized how truly miserable I was there.  I was left there at half term, and taken on my first formal shoot, and it repelled me.  Down would fall a maimed bird, to be picked up by some perfectly horrid beast of a dog who would slobber in nutritious ecstasy."  Jasper was 9 years old in 1939.

Jasper: "Mr. W.M. Grundy was the headmaster of my school, Roysee's School, Abingdon.  He was a great chess player.  He use to just sit there [at the chessboard].  The boys would rotate around him, and he would polish them off, one at a time."

Roysse's School was also called Abingdon Grammar School, and Abingdon School (the name which is used today).  It is a day and boarding independent school for boys. It is the twentieth oldest independent British school and celebrated its 750th anniversary in 2006.

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