• Grammar-school educated in Dartford, Kent.
• Scholarship to St Catherine’s, Oxford, to read History.
• Thirty years plus at the chalk-face – the love affair with teaching the young never diminished.
• Degrees: Four Masters and one Doctorate.
• A creative life now as an author.

I wrote quite a lot about myself in ‘What’s Wrong with Schools’ in 1984. Anyone interested in some of the salient features of the early life would find that piece an interesting read.

Here, I single out a few of the ‘personae’ that have identified me in my later life, since my mid-30s:

Rob Donovan - Scholar and Academic

Having failed the 11+ first time round and scraped into Dartford Grammar School after supplementary tests and interview, my self-confidence was, shall we say, fragile. But I had internalised my parents' concern that I should work hard and do well. And on the whole I did enjoy lessons and learning. I was usually in the top third of the class in most subjects and did take pleasure in doing very well in History.

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Rob Donovan - Teacher

First, the bare statistics for this classroom teacher who made it into the ranks of middle management as a Head of Department in his second year of teaching and rose no further:

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Rob Donovan - Runner

I relish this ‘persona’ a lot, not least because it seems so counter-intuitive for someone like me who ‘couldn’t run for toffee’ as a child to qualify as a runner today. As a kid, I was short-sighted and didn’t get to wear corrective glasses until I was 11 years old. I remember knocking myself out and being taken to hospital when I misjudged the gap between the wall edge at the back of the house and the passage way to the side-kitchen door and ran straight into the wall, aged around nine. Doh!

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Rob Donovan - Labour Party Activist

As a writer, I had already created ‘Deception’ - my cross-genre fantasy of a secular pilgrim’s journey through the social and political landscape of this country between 2010 and 2015. My socialist beliefs and inspiration were clear enough. My search for understanding after the banking crisis of 2008 squeezed any Blairite ‘Third Way’ thinking out of my head. But I belonged to no political party, having resigned from the Labour Party after the Iraq war.

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Rob Donovan - The Metaphysical Side

It’s tricky finding a title for this page that I am creating to identify another of my personae. I could call it ‘THE RELIGIOUS SIDE’ or ‘THE SPIRITUAL SIDE’ but I’ve chosen to go with the less familiar ‘metaphysical’ angle. I think people will have fewer preconceptions when they see that title; they are more likely to be asking what’s that about?

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