Miss Lloyd taught English at Bishop Fox’s girls’ grammar school in Taunton, Somerset. Although I became head girl, I never enjoyed school. I didn’t enjoy Miss Lloyd either - in fact, I detested her. Only later, when I was at Oxford, did I begin to realise what she had given me. Miss Lloyd had given me the essential stimulation to be a rebel. She’d given me the insight into myself to realise that I could not toe the line, and I could dare to be different. She made me question my own values and beliefs.

She was very different herself. She and her sister lived in a cottage round the back of the school, where they kept goats. I passed there as I walked to school. The front garden was a mud patch, and Miss Lloyd made a wooden bridge so the goats could go in and out of the sitting room window. There were usually two or three goats in the garden; I don’t know how many more were in the house. She was very fond of animals and told me once that she preferred animals to children.

She had wispy grey hair, which she wore in a bun, and even though I disliked her because of her sarcasm and the way she humiliated girls who weren’t clever, her English lessons excited me. I remember her bringing advertisements into the class and we would deconstruct them. We would look at them to see what they were trying to tell us, what they were trying to sell us, how they were doing it, and what was the effect on us. I have since always looked at advertisements, or anything people are trying to persuade me about, in the same way.

The other valuable thing she did was inspire me about English literature, and especially writers such as Jane Austen. She never managed to teach me grammar though. I was not interested and got appalling marks in exams.

My mother was a pacifist, and some of my earliest memories are of going on big rallies as a small child. Like my mother, I was a member of the Peace Pledge Union and I wore my PPU badge to school. One day, Miss Lloyd asked me to walk round the hockey field with her. She told me it was quite wrong to wear a PPU badge to school. She was wearing an animal welfare badge so I challenged her: “Why do you let other girls wear animal welfare badges?” She replied: “That’s quite different, because it’s not political. PPU is political and you cannot make political statements at school. We must clip your wings.”

I removed the badge, and my mother agreed that I should compromise by not wearing it at school, but continue to do so out of school. But I felt bitter about it. Later, I realised that if you believe something strongly and if you can produce evidence for what you believe, you need to stand your ground. That attitude has influenced what I am most interested in doing in life, which is helping other women to find more satisfying lives around childbirth and motherhood. To a large extent, I owe that attitude to my mother; but I was also greatly influenced by Miss Lloyd’s attempt to “clip my wings”.

We didn’t keep in touch after I left school. But when I was a student at Oxford and I looked back on my schooldays, I realised that she had provided the stimulus I needed. At home I had always had support, and my views on life, human society, relationships, war and peace were similar to my mother’s. It was good to have had that opposition. Miss Lloyd was probably the first person to challenge me head on.

Feminist Sheila Kitzinger was talking to Pamela Coleman

THE STORY SO FAR

1929 Born in Taunton

1949 Attends Bishop Fox’s school, Taunton

1952 Diploma in social anthropology from Oxford

1952-53 Teaching and research at Edinburgh University

1953 MLitt from Oxford

1962 The Experience of Childbirth published, first of 24 books which have been translated into 19 languages

1986 Chair, International Home Birth movement

1990 Launches Birth Crisis Network for women who have had distressing births

2000 Publication of Rediscovering Birth

2001 Lectures at Oxford Brookes University

2002 Publication of Birth Your Way: choosing birth at home or in a birth centre (Dorling Kindersley, February); tutor, Sheffield University online masters degree in midwifery