Passed/Failed: An education in the life of Brigid Keenan, journalist

'I loathed being sent to a convent'

Brigid Keenan was Woman's Editor of The Observer at the same time as her sister, the late Moira Keenan, was Woman's Editor at The Times. At 33 she married Alan Waddams, a diplomat and now EU Roving Ambassador to Azerbaijan. Her books include Damascus: Hidden Treasures of the Old City and, out now in paperback, Diplomatic Baggage: the Adventures of a Trailing Spouse. An exhibition of her collection of carpets by Muslim Chinese weavers opens in May at the new Talisman Gallery, 79-91, New Kings Road, London.

We lived in Poona next door to a general who one night was stabbed in the chest with a pair of shears by his gardener, I don't know why. There was a lot of blood on the gate between our two gardens but he lived. My childhood was very Jewel in the Crown: I was the daughter of a [British] Brigadier-General in the Indian army. We had a governess - Miss Waller or "Swaller" - until Independence, when I was seven. When Gandhi was killed, no one knew, at first, who had done it. My father said, "If Gandhi's been killed by an Englishman, we'll all be dead by supper-time."

When it turned out that he had been killed by someone from Poona, the city was in an uproar. My father was driving through the riots; suddenly he saw Swaller on her bike, cycling past buildings in flames, and yelled "Get off the streets, Swaller!" I don't remember learning anything academic from her, but she did teach me never to go anywhere without a cardigan, a bag of peanuts or biscuits, water and a paperback.

It was wonderful to be educated at home - no bullying! - but it made it difficult, when we came to England, to adapt to Miss Seed's, the awful place we were sent to in Aldershot, though Miss Seed liked me and put me in charge of making her "Camp" coffee.

My father got a job as a cowman, then trained as a land agent and managed an estate near Taunton; my younger sister Tessa and I (Moira had already left school by that time) went to a convent near there - as boarders. I absolutely loathed it. Even now I don't like being away from home for even a weekend.

My parents had to prise my fingers from the door-frames to get me there. I cried all the time and the nuns said I had washed all the colour out of my eyes. I used to say to Tessa, "Cry - then maybe they'll take us both home!" I wet the bed, so as a punishment was sent to sleep in a huge empty dormitory. It didn't help that one nun told us terrifying ghost stories: Edgar Allan Poe in a habit! We did love one of the Sisters; she was the art teacher and ran away with the father of one of the pupils.

The family moved back to Hampshire and we were sent to Farnborough Convent, again as boarders. Again, I wondered why. One of the nuns, Mother Short used to say things like "There go the Keenan sisters doing the devil's work on earth."

In the end I rather liked Farnborough Convent. I still have the photo of a most exciting midnight feast under the school stage. We might have had wine; we certainly had roast chicken.

I did ten O-levels, passing eight but with 10 per cent in Latin and maths. Then my mother thought I should go to a finishing school in Paris, Mademoiselle Anita's. I really didn't fit in: the other girls came from all the historic families of Europe - there was Clemy Metternich, a von Bismark and a daughter of the Bourbons, the French Royal family - but they were funny, and nice to me. We all had to have lessons in midwifery; when I asked if I could be excused, Mademoiselle Anita said, "You never know if someone on your estate might need your help." (Council estate, more like, as far as I was concerned.)

Mademoiselle Anita herself held a class called "Savoir-vivre" and told us that if you let a man have your little finger, he'd take your whole body. Which was probably accurate.