Liked my new school - Gormanston College, Co Meath - from the first moment. Going there, though, was a bit of a shock. My background was Dublin working class. It was my mother who had decided that my brother and I were to get a good education. She put me in for a number of scholarships and the Gormanston one proved the best.

Some of the boys at school were sons of rich farmers. For the first time in my life I experienced the Dublin/rural divide. "Go back to your Dublin slum," students would say. "Go back to your whitewashed cottages," I'd reply. But I soon made friends with people with whom I had interests in common and realised that the aggressive anti-Dublin students weren't that bright.

The castle had belonged to the Prestons - the Viscounts Gormanston, an unusual Catholic Anglo-Irish family after whom the town of Preston in Lancashire is named. During my time in Gormanston I lived in the castle, which was very exciting and sufficiently full of turrets, crenellations and dungeons to capture the imagination of a 12-year-old.

The school was run by the Franciscans and I liked the way they mixed with the boys. There was a great rapport between us. I was fairly okay academically - always in the A stream - and my year produced some fairly good people. UCC's Prof Joe Lee sat in front of me in the study hall, for example.

During my time there, the school produced people with good academic qualifications but almost no business people. We enjoyed the classical education, learning Latin and Greek.

At school I was mad about soccer and not at all ambitious. When I left in 1959, there was no question of my going to university. That cost money. I had always enjoyed the satisfaction gained from writing and decided I wanted to be a journalist. I joined the Irish Press as a copy boy when I was 17.

Fortunately for me, the management of the newspaper industry decided to set up a course in journalism at Rathmines College of Commerce and allow young journalists

out on block release two or three days each week. By that time I was working as a junior sports journalist.

For two years I got the chance to enjoy a post second-level education and studied English, economics, Irish and newspaper law. I was among the first group to qualify in journalism from the college. I found it extremely useful since it helped to broaden my attitude.

Between 1967 and 1980 I worked for the Irish Independent then became sports editor of the Sunday Tribune. When that paper folded, I was taken on as a sports sub by The Irish Times and later became news focus (features) editor. After a spell as tourism correspondent, I moved to Moscow in 1991.

I'm back in Dublin now, in electronic publishing but, like the Skibereen Eagle, I keep my eye on the Russian bear. I've grown to love that country very much.

Seamus Martin is a senior Irish Times journalist. His novel, Duggan's Destiny (Poolbeg £7.99), a fictional account of the last years of Daniel O'Connell's life as seen through the eyes of his manservant, is published this week. He was in conversation with Yvonne Healy