You Never Know Your Luck - Reflections of a Cockney Campaigner for Education

This memoir by Fred Jarvis, former President of the NUS and General Secretary of the National Union of Teachers, ranges across his enthusiasms for football, photography and the arts. It relates his encounters with colourful characters from Bill Clinton and Mikhail Gorbachev to Muggsy Spanier, Frank Sinatra and Eric Cantona. Above all, it reflects his lifelong campaigning for education and his obsession with politics, including his acerbic commentary on the activities of the ultra-left in the NUT and the threat some of today's doctrinaire politicians pose to the educational prospects of the country's most disadvantaged youngsters