Former Taoiseach and leader of Fine Gael Dr Garret FitzGerald learned a lot about girls' group mentality while ensconsed in a females-only class

I remember arriving at school and sitting down on the floor doing my alphabet letters - which my mother had already taught me already at home. At that time, we took the Irish Independent and I remember one of the first big words I learned was in-de-pen-dent. My mother had been a teacher herself, so by the time I went to school I was beginning to read.

St Bridget's in Bray was a private primary school run by Miss Lucy Braiden. I was there for four years and I remember liking it very much. One odd feature was that I found myself after the first year or so in a girls-only class. It was only many years later that I met Miss Braiden's sister who explained that my mother had asked her to keep me on because most boys left the school after First Communion. So I had three years in the class with girls only, which was very formative.

I learnt a lot about girls, which was very useful. I decided to get married early because I could see that while with an individual girl you could get on very well, they gang up on you in a group, so the obvious thing was to marry one. I decided that when I was eight.

I remember also being humiliated by the discovery that some of the girls knew about the assassination of the Yugoslav king and the French foreign minister and I didn't. I vowed to read the papers since then and that really determined my future in foreign affairs of which I became minister eventually - so they were very formative years.

I went from there to Ring. My brothers had all been in Ring at various periods. My parents, I think, met in the Gaelic League in London. My father was the son of London Irish immigrants. My mother come from Belfast to do a higher degree in education. They went to live in Kerry in 1913 in order to take part in what they hoped would be a national movement of independence through Irish. So there was a fair amount of enthusiasm for the language and we were all sent to Ring.

I was there for a year and went back for three Easters afterwards. I was nine when I first went. We went in a group by train. My brothers were gone by the time I got there - they were much older than me. They were there during the Civil War - in fact, it's possible they were sent back again during the Civil War because there were tensions at home - my parents disagreed on the issue.

I enjoyed it, but I wouldn't have wanted to be any longer in boarding school because I greatly appreciated the company of my parents. I learned so much from them and I would have regretted if I had had to go away again. But a year wasn't bad and it did give me a sufficient amount of Irish to coast through second level without having to do much work.

I went to Belvedere. I was interviewed and asked a couple of what seemed very simple questions and they put me immediately, at the age of 10, into first year. The average age of the class was two years older than me, which was very good because it meant I was always in competition. I was usually fourth or sixth in the class, never first, which is a very good thing, I think. We weren't put under pressure to play games in Belvedere. I did play rugby a couple of times, but when I found it meant running after the ball I decided against that. At the age of 10, running after a ball seemed really a bit juvenile. I found in Belvedere a very liberal kind of education - it suited me and I got a very good teaching in history. Father Matty Bodkin was very inspiring - and Father Shrenk, who was the philosophy teacher.

It was a period of war and that was a matter of great discussion. Many of the boys would have been anti-British. It was not that long after the War of Independence and therefore we were tempted to be pro-German. I was constantly in the school yard arguing the case against Germany. I still have my notes that I copied out from a Papal encyclical from Pius XI arguing the case against the Nazis, so I was very politically aware. I was involved in school debates in English and Irish and indeed it was the priest in charge of the debates - Father Burke Savage - who encouraged me to go into politics later in life.

I was a well behaved child. In reports, I used to get "inattentive unsatisfactory and talkative" - they used the initials IUT - but I did alright in exams. I thought I was well behaved, but nobody else seemed to think so. I remembering being punished for not accepting Savonarola was a saint. I said the Pope burned him, he couldn't be a saint. I was very orthodox in those days. I stood outside the door and got six of the best. I also protested about having the Rosary in Irish. Even though I had a fair amount of Irish, it was hard enough to think what the prayers mean without doing it in a less familiar language. But that theological protest in second year achieved nothing, I'm afraid.

In conversation with Olivia Kelly