Professor Christine Bell of the University of Ulster is an old friend of mine. I knew her first when she was a clarinettist, and I played percussion, in the Belfast Youth Orchestra as teenagers; then we more or less overlapped at Cambridge; then we both ended up at QUB again; then we both got into the international arena at about the same time – I quoted her work to the president of Macedonia; she recently sent me a couple of chapters of her next book to critique.
But it turns out that I am not her only old friend.
Small world, eh?
There are several sequels, though all except the second with easily confusable names such as The Revenge of the Demon Headmaster. (The second (not the best) is The Prime Minister’s Brain.) My daughter loves these books.
There’s also a pretty good BBC adaptation of the first two books, viewable on Youtube. The Demon Headmaster looks uncannily like Jack Straw, who was then Home Secretary…