OUTH is often said to be the time of hope, but it is inevitably also a time of missed opportunities. In 1963, I was enjoying that comparatively relaxed post-O-level phase of school, when, given sensitive direction, young minds could begin to explore and expand for themselves. We were lucky in that we found guides in the new generation of masters who were working themselves—and us—free of the school’s Victorian ethos. Three of them died earlier this year, which deprives me of the chance to ask whether anyone considered pointing us to the ‘most impressive collection of books ever gathered’ in the exhibition ‘Printing and the Mind
