I like autobiographies of people at the top of their profession, including big names in football such as Geoff Hurst and the Italian referee Pierluigi Collina. I’m curious about what drives them, what motivates them. The likes of Clough and Greaves and Gascoigne have a lot of baggage, yet they seem to be able to overcome that on the sports field, if not always off it.

A novel that I was surprised to find I kept on reading was Star of the Sea by Joseph O’Connor, Sinead O’Connor‘s brother. It’s set in 1847, against a backdrop of the Irish famine and English oppression. It’s about a ship full of Irish refugees sailing to the US. There’s a killer on board, so it has a mystery element. It’s fascinating the way the historical threads of fact and fiction are woven together. As a child I always believed the English were the good guys; this tells the other side of the story.

Best inspiration

I’m curious about the things that we don’t know, but should know. Things that are found out by people working against the odds. I’ve enjoyed Michael Moore’s books, including Stupid White Men, for that reason: they tell you about the corruption of power and social injustice behind the media-controlled scenes. And Moore (pictured) fought the establishment to get his books published and his films produced.

Films I love

The Shawshank Redemption: another story of a fight against injustice.

Something for school

Speke Hall is a stone’s throw from our school: a grand wattle-and-daub Tudor manor, furnished in Victorian splendour. We take the children there, and to Croxteth Hall, another Victorian house, to dress up and act out history. The halls become not just buildings but places where people lived and worked. When our children scrub and brush and polish, as children their age would have done, they get a sense of how life used to be.

Treat in store

I find the buildings, sights and sounds of cities fascinating: my wife and I have city breaks planned to Seville and Berlin. I’ve never been there before: I want to find out more about how the Wall came down, about how the East met the West, and what people have learned from that era.

Peter Price, 55, is head of St Christopher’s Catholic primary school in Speke, Liverpool. Interview by Karen Gold