The best education I ever received came from my mother. It was during the Second World War and I couldn't easily get to school because there was no transport. My mother taught me at home for a couple of years. She was a natural teacher and I suffered no disadvantage when I started school at the age of six.

We moved around a lot and I attended a number of different schools. In 1947 we came to rest in York where I attended a small `dame school' - probably the best school I ever attended and I remember it with affection. It was an old-fashioned school and we learned everything by rote.

I didn't find it limiting, though, and Miss Meady, who ran the school, was an extremely imaginative teacher. We were well taught and the discipline was firm but kindly. The school's only famous pupil was Judy Dench the actress who was just a few years ahead of me.

I then spent a year at a Catholic convent in York where the thrust was heavily religious. The nuns were very kind but made non-Catholics feel that they weren't part of the chosen flock. "You'll never get to Heaven," one nun told me.

At 12, I went to boarding school - the Royal School, Bath - which had been set up to educate the daughters of Indian army officers. Traditionally army daughters were not the most academic of people and their fathers wouldn't have had any great academic ambitions for them. The teachers, however, did harbour such ambitions for their students.

I was never particularly happy at boarding school - even though it was I who had pushed to go. I made great friends there but I felt imprisoned and found the lack of freedom restrictive. However, I did receive a good education. I enjoyed studying but I was pushed into studying languages for which I had no particular aptitude - I would have been happier studying history or geography.

I was aiming for Oxford or Cambridge but didn't get in and went instead to London University - to Westfield College where I did German. I can't say I derived a huge pleasure from studying German. If you're going to get the most out of college life you must enjoy the subject you're taking.

At the time failing to get into Oxbridge was a disappointment but I've learned that disappointments can often lead to better things. I got a lot out of living in London. I grew to love it and developed a great interest in the theatre.

Like so many young women of my generation, I didn't know what to do when I left college. In those days women didn't have careers, they took jobs which tided them over until they got married. My father had died when I was quite young, leaving my mother with two small children and very little money.

Whatever happened, I knew I always wanted to be able to earn my own money. I became a secretary but quickly realised that it wouldn't hold my interest for long. I decided to go back to university - to Southampton - where I did a master's on the works of Brecht and considered becoming an academic. But again I realised I would be in the wrong job. I didn't love the subject enough.

So, I sat the Foreign Office exams and was accepted. The work suited me and I've stayed.

Veronica Sutherland is British ambassador to Ireland. She was in conversation with Yvonne Healy