Our Year 8s had a whale of a time with author Anthony McGowan on Thursday 6^th October.  An excellent speaker, Tony kept them engaged with stories of his school in Leeds (where expelled kids got sent), how he avoided the bullies (by being good at football, although cricket is his main love now) and the terrible thing that happened to him 18 years’ ago (no, not puberty – one of the suggestions given to him – but having his first child!  And then looking after him!!)  Having been a professional author for many years now, Tony had a plethora of books to read from, but we loved the farting excerpt from Hellbent, and the library was totally hushed when he read from The Knife that Killed Me.  The books are a wonderful mixture of vulgarity, philosophy, darkness and hilarity, and we didn’t have enough time at the end of each session for all the questions the students wanted to ask. 

We “won” Tony in the amazing “Authors for Grenfell” auction, which eventually raised over £185,000 for the victims of the disaster.  So this visit helped a really good cause.