'Each year the teacher held up my pathetically barren book as an example for all the other pupils of how not to support your country and they would all laugh - that peculiar braying laugh that exists only when children are invited by adults to enjoy themselves at the expense of another child. It is the cruellest laugh in the world.'
Bill Bryson, The Life and Times of The Thunderbolt Kid: Travels through My Childhood, p. 211.
