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In his ‘Sketch of my Life’ Lord Nelson writes that he ‘was sent to the high school at Norwich and afterwards removed to North Walsham’. This is the only direct reference he makes to his short period of school learning. The rest of his education began ‘on the disturbance with Spain relative to the Falkland Islands’ when he ‘went to sea with my uncle, Captain Maurice Suckling in the Raisonable of 64 guns. At the age of 12 the wooden world of the Royal Navy became his classroom from where he ‘graduated’ to become Britain’s greatest naval hero.
He would have been on the threshold of starting his school days about 250 years ago. A significant part of them would be spent at Paston School at North Walsham. In contrast to the conventional grammar education at Norwich ‘high school’, Paston was a progressive institution with a liberal and arts-based curriculum, which furnished the young Nelson with a love of Shakespeare and an ability to write, as described by Colin White, with ‘an exhilarating stream of consciousness that vividly captures his impulsive and eager way of speaking.’
