But one of the things that my father did was to let me read comics. Now people used to say that’s bad because it isn’t — it spoils your English but, in fact, letting me read — I devoured all kinds of comics — fed my love for English and my love for reading but I suppose if he had been firm I might not have developed this deep love for reading and for English, which stood me in good stead when I later went into hospital for 20 months. I did have something to do. I had — as things maybe got a little bit more serious, I was given a diet — we didn’t have too many books but my father was keen that one read things like Aesop’s Fables and Lamb’s, Tales from Shakespeare . I didn’t read the originals but I read these stories that describe what Shakespeare was saying in the plays and that possibly was something that sharpened your appetite for later.
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Desmond Tutu
Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town; chair of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission; Nobel Peace Prize, 1984
South Africa · 1931–2021
Politics and public life
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South African Anglican cleric who became General Secretary of the South African Council of Churches and then Archbishop of Cape Town, and who was a leading non-violent opponent of apartheid. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 and chaired the Truth and Reconciliation Commission from 1995.
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