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Views | Duration | ||
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11. Breaking the bond with nanny | 63 | 02:11 | |
12. Foreign holidays | 72 | 02:04 | |
13. A dubious honour | 64 | 02:49 | |
14. The moment the world changed forever | 145 | 01:43 | |
15. Setting off for America | 71 | 01:53 | |
16. Drawing lessons for the ungifted | 87 | 01:44 | |
17. My voyage to America | 68 | 00:54 | |
18. America – my safe haven | 69 | 01:41 | |
19. Going to school in Canada | 101 | 01:23 | |
20. Hitching a lift on a cruiser | 73 | 02:36 |
School was Canada because my father was determined that I should go to Eton in a couple of years and the Canadian curriculum was much closer to the British curriculum than the American one was. So at the beginning of every term, I would take... The first time I did it with my nanny, after that I did it alone. I would take the night sleeper from Toronto... from New York to Toronto where I would be met and taken to Upper Canada College Prep School where I was educated. And I enjoyed Upper Canada College, really I think very much. One thing I liked about it in particular was that instead of playing football in the winter, we played ice hockey, which I infinitely preferred. I'd always hated football but ice hockey was terrific fun. And the education, looking back on it, I don't think it was all that good but I don't know, it's hard to judge at this stage. Only a couple of years ago I was in Canada and went back there and was given the real red carpet treatment. They looked after us and showed us around. The whole thing is so completely transformed now that there was absolutely nothing to be seen of the old Upper Canada College Prep School that I remembered at all.
John Julius Norwich (1929-2018) was an English popular historian, travel writer and television personality. He was educated at Upper Canada College, Toronto, at Eton, at the University of Strasbourg and on the lower deck of the Royal Navy before taking a degree in French and Russian at New College, Oxford. He then spent twelve years in H.M. Foreign Service, with posts at the Embassies in Belgrade and Beirut and at the Disarmament Conference in Geneva. In 1964 he resigned to become a writer. He is the author of histories of Norman Sicily, the Republic of Venice, the Byzantine Empire and, most recently, 'The Popes: A History'. He also wrote on architecture, music and the history plays of Shakespeare, and presented some thirty historical documentaries on BBC Television.
Title: Going to school in Canada
Listeners: Christopher Sykes
Christopher Sykes is an independent documentary producer who has made a number of films about science and scientists for BBC TV, Channel Four, and PBS.
Tags: Canada
Duration: 1 minute, 23 seconds
Date story recorded: 2017
Date story went live: 03 October 2018