We were all well primed

SIR: I read with delight Priscilla Applebe’s comments on The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and Gillespie’s School (Letters, September issue).

I, too, attended James Gillespie’s, from reception class to sixth form, a decade earlier than your correspondent, in the Forties continuing into the Fifties. It was a decade after the era of ‘la crème de la crème’ but many of the staff were the same and could be recognised in the novel – a real roman à clef. The departments of art, music and sciences were very much as described by Muriel Spark. Only English had a radical change… a male teacher.

The education was excellent all round and we felt that the teachers had a strong interest in pushing us forward. Sixth-

form exams were encouraged and university was the goal for the two top sets. My closest school friend, Betty Gourlay, now Bryce, came top in the bursary competition across the whole of Scotland. It’s very satisfying to feel that the school is memorialised by Spark. Rosalind Landy, Cambridge