Letter: Tatiana Wolff was an exotic and ebullient teacher who helped me greatly

http://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/may/19/tatiana-wolff-obituary-letter

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Tatiana Wolff taught me English at Loughton high school in Essex, and she and Janet Morrell, another inspirational teacher, tutored our small sixth form group studying for A levels and university entrance exams.

I can’t express sufficiently how life-affirming that experience was. Miss Wolff brought us news of the world of culture and books. Both she and Miss Morrell lived in London, and we were treated to theatre visits to the capital, followed by the excitement of eating in Chinatown.

I remember Miss Wolff being horrified at the overthrow of Archbishop Makarios in Cyprus, exclaiming that “they can’t defrock an ordained priest!” Her Russian Orthodoxy only made us more enamoured of her exoticism, although I have no recollection of her “Russian accent” mentioned in the obituary. She always spoke in received pronunciation to my ear.

Miss Wolff was ebullient, enthusiastic and encouraging, and was instrumental in persuading me not only to take entrance exams to university but to do English at scholarship level. My parents, although always behind me, were not well off and would probably have preferred me to become a librarian. However, thanks to the encouragement of Miss Wolff I got a state scholarship and went to London University.