Everyone loves a tale of fall and redemption. Alcoholism, binge bingo, obsession with weird religion or even an addiction to Wagner, anything with a whiff of destructive self-abuse will do. So here is my confession: I am a recovering MCP, or Male Chauvinist Pig.

The rot began with prep school, an all-male institution to which I was sent at the age of eight. This was 1966, and there was not a single woman teacher. The kindly matron became an object of terror when, after a ski accident, my leg was put in plaster and she had to bathe me. I went on to a public school that was not just all-male, it was a monastery – several hundred adolescent boys and clever celibates locked away in the isolated Yorkshire valley of Ampleforth.