A. Veronique Tadjo
Tae Kwon Do is a martial art which has become popular as a sporting activity in recent years. I started learning it in the Ivory Coast in Africa when I was about 13, and later became the country’s first black belt. My teacher, Kim Young Tae, had been sent by the Tae Kwon Do federation in Korea to open a club. It was very successful. When he arrived he didn’t know a word of French so he used to demonstrate rather than explain. At the time my brother and I started learning Tae Kwon Do, we were fighting like mad. But we quickly understood we had to stop fighting because we realised that fighting was about self-defence, not aggression. Tae Kwon Do teaches you to control your anger and control your body. It is very good for your memory, co-ordination and self-discipline. And you are acquiring a philosophy. Later on, Kim opened a restaurant and then moved back to Korea. We had a very friendly relationship, but somehow I feel like I was a disappointment to him. He thought I had a future in the sport. But when I was 17 I decided it was not what I wanted to do.

B. Helen Mirren
Everyone loved Miss Welding. She taught me between the ages of 13 and 17 and was instrumental in my becoming an actress. She knew I was interested in acting, but it just wasn’t an option in my world. My father was a driving examiner and I wasn’t exposed to acting as a career. It was Miss Welding who told me about the National Youth Theatre, which was an organisation I was unaware of. She suggested I look into it and think about going there. About ten years after I left school, when I was with the Royal Shakespeare Company and playing fairly high-profile parts, I got a letter from Miss Welding saying she was following my
career with interest, but as far as I know, she never came to see me perform. She certainly never came to see me backstage.

C. Nisha Ishtiak
My father was editor of Pakistan’s largest newspaper and he knew and liked its librarian, Atif Burkhi. Atif was well-educated and when I was about 12 my father decided I should learn more about the region’s history and he chose Atif as my tutor. It turned out to be an inspired move. He would come to our house once a week to teach me, from the end of school until supper. He took me through a lot of history, but after a few lessons I got bored. ‘I know you’re being paid by my parents to teach me this stuff,’ I said, ‘but there are other things in the world.’ He burst out laughing as he so often did and asked: ‘What do you want to talk about then?’ And so we would discuss global issues and world literature.

D. Suzanne Terry
Brian Earle, my English teacher was a very intense man with thick glasses, and the fact that he taught a lot of his classes standing on his head was also seen as extremely peculiar. He taught me for just one year and it was probably one of the most creative years of my life. He didn’t believe in giving marks for grammar or punctuation; he implied that the mechanics of writing were not important if you had something to say. When I wrote a short story for him called ‘Army’, he simply wrote across the bottom: 'You’ve just got to keep on writing.’ Those few words of support had a fantastic effect on me in terms of wanting to write and be involved in writing. Brian Earle had a love of teaching and his subject.