140 Year 7 students were treated to a visit from our old Patron of Reading, S F Said, on Tuesday 3rd July.  He talked to them about how he came to start writing, the effort it takes (with over 90 rejections and  7 years to get Varjak Paw re-drafted and published) and the joy in winning Awards like the Smarties Award, the Blue Peter Award, the IBBY Honours List and –don’t forget – the Haringey Children’s Book Award!  His love of reading was kickstarted by Watership Down and he spoke about how the books you read as a child stay with you for life.  And of course Star Wars played a huge part in inspiring him to write Phoenix.  It was wonderful to see how many of our students had already read all his books and he was impressed by their intelligent questions.