In the late 1960s Miles Wootton, more widely known as a singer-songwriter whose wry songs are still popular in folk clubs, was my French teacher at Brighton, Hove & Sussex grammar school, now a sixth form college.
The school was very strict and old-fashioned in those days, and he was a rare beacon of warmth and sensitivity. I remember him bringing his guitar into some lessons while teaching us late-19th-century French poetry – Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine and Mallarmé.
