What three adjectives would you use to describe yourself?
Calm, considerate, guileless

What are your greatest achievements?
My son Keanu was born on 30th June, 2008. It’s not really my achievement, but it feels great anyway.

What’s your favourite smell?
Freshly baked bread

What is your favourite taste?
A cold beer after vigorous exercise

What’s your favourite work of art?
It’s not one work of art, but any time I’m in a room full of Rothkos I get contemplative and feel something of the mystery of the universe.

What book would you like everyone to read? Why?
First, I would like everyone to read. Half the world is illiterate.

How many languages do you speak and why?
Besides English, I speak Italian (I lived there for a few years); I understand a lot of Portuguese (my wife is Brazilian); I know a bit of Spanish (I live in New Mexico, US, and hear the language daily); and somewhere in the back of my mind is reasonable spoken Arabic (I lived in Cairo for two years). And I’m becoming fluent in Motherese (parent-to-baby language).

What do you like most/least about your job?
About writing: I most like the chance – indeed necessity – to be creative; independence; taking serious conference calls with publishers whilst lying on the sofa in my underwear. Least: occasional feelings of isolation as I sit at my desk. It feels as if life is happening elsewhere.
About teaching: I love the moments when you reach ‘communion’ with the students and everyone is deeply engaged in an activity. I least like my own bad habit of getting theatrical and rabble-rousing when faced with a sleepy or de-motivated class.

What would heaven be like if you were in charge?
It would involve a lot of beach rugby, chilled wine, live music and everyone being extremely polite to one another.

When and where were you happiest?
1. When my son was born.
2. Driving across the Karoo desert in South Africa many years ago. The sun was setting in front of me and I hadn’t seen another soul for hours. I caught a glimpse of something moving in the corner of my eye. I turned my head and saw twenty wild horses racing the car. Eventually they receded into the distance but I’ve never forgotten them.

Something you are never without
A good excuse

What is your most appealing habit?
I’m always trying to learn. I carry notebooks around and write down anything I think is wise/interesting/useful, whatever the source.

And your least appealing habit?
Scribbling in my notebook while someone is trying to talk to me

What do you like/dislike most about your appearance?
Like: I’m told I have kind eyes. Dislike: I have a broken nose and a neck like a birthday cake – both legacies of rugby.

What is the trait you most dislike in others?
I recognise others’ bad traits because they are the same traits I dislike in myself: vanity, dishonesty, hypocrisy and lots of other nouns ending in y.

Which living person do you most admire and why?
Everyone always answers Mandela. And they’re right. Mandela. Because he forgave.

What is your most treasured possession?
My friend Mostafa once said to me, “The things we own can end up owning us”. I agree, and I don’t really have any treasured possessions but I’d be a bit grumpy if I lost the diaries I’ve been writing for the last ten years.

If you could have a super-power, what would it be?
Mind-reading would be handy. Flying would be dandy.

What words or phrases do you overuse?
Umm … to be honest …

What single thing would improve the quality of your life?
A soundproofed artist’s studio in the countryside with wooden floorboards, twenty large blank canvases, a ton of paint, a free weekend and enough booze to fell an ox. I would be the next Jackson Pollock.

How would you like to be remembered?
As a loving husband and father

Who would you like to play you if they made a film of your life?
Denzel Washington for the first half of the film and then Morgan Freeman to lend my old age some undeserved gravitas.

What did you dream of being when you were younger?
Older

If a young person asked you for advice about becoming a teacher what would you say to them?
Young people do ask me this frequently. I have many answers depending on the situation and the person asking. Perhaps the most important thing is to have the humility to know that teachers learn more than they teach. And teachers should never be afraid to experiment; good teaching is always subversive.

What were you like as a student at school?
I was good at anything involving creativity or sport and totally useless at anything involving science or numbers.

How do you cheer yourself up when you are feeling down?
I inherited a tranquil temperament; fortunately, I never feel down.

If I hadn’t been a teacher I would probably have been a ......
… manual labourer. I like losing myself in physical work.

Who has been the best teacher you have ever had?
My father. Not because of what he does or says but because of who he is.

Something that few people know about you.
I was born in Germany and I have Nigerian/English/Polish ancestry.

If you could right one wrong that was done in the past, what would it be?
Slavery

What’s your favourite proverb?
The more you know, the less you need.

What’s your best learning memory from school?
John Marston, my English teacher, played us a radio recording of a Harold Pinter play (I think it was The Homecoming), and I guessed correctly what would happen next. Aged 12, it was the first time I’d ever felt clever.

What’s your favourite thing to do when it rains?
Run outside, screaming

The first news event you remember.
The death of John Lennon

What would you like to learn to do next?
The cryptic crossword; Sign Language; make paella; milk a cow; play the cello