Career in journalism gave budding radical his ticket to China

It's hard to figure out all the reasons one ends up doing what one does. But for somebody from a small town in the US who ended up in an international career, I suppose living abroad at a formative period whetted my appetite for foreign travel and broadened my horizons.

When I was 11 my family moved to England for a year, so I went to Overdale Junior School in Leicester. That really opened my eyes to see different things in a different way. The early 1960s was an interesting time to be in England; there was the emergence of The Beatles and the beginning of the whole 'cool London' period.

Just the experience of being exposed to another culture was interesting - having to wear the British school uniform of shorts and a jacket. I had to get special dispensation from the headmaster to wear long trousers when it snowed.

The public secondary school system back in my hometown of Northampton, Massachusetts, was a mess. There was an inadequate budget and lousy facilities. So I tried a private school called Williston Academy, where I was utterly miserable. I found it very stiff and conservative.

I was a budding radical and got interested in the Vietnam war. In one debate I took the position of criticising the war and afterwards several of the students threw me in the pond. I learnt that sometimes there is a price to be paid for voicing opinions that are out of the mainstream.

I switched back and spent my secondary school years in the public system, which was so overcrowded that [the school] had morning and afternoon sessions in a big, cruddy old building.