“Especially my father. He was doing most of it and he is a savoury, strong character. He has strong beliefs about the world and in himself, and he was helping me a lot, even when I was at university as an undergraduate.”

An only child, Arran was born in 1995 in Glasgow, where his parents were studying at the time. His father has Spanish lineage, having a great grandfather who was a sailor who moved from Spain to St Vincent in the Carribean. A son later left the islands for the UK where he married an English woman. Arran’s mother is Norwegian.

“My father was writing and my mother is an economist. They both worked from home which also made things easier,” Arran says.

Neil, a political economist, attended state and private schools in Hampshire but was also taught for a period at home by his mother.

It’s strange because for most people maths is a real turn-off, yet maths is all about patterns and children of two or three love patterns. It just shows that schools are doing something seriously wrong.”

When Lawrence was five, her father gave up his job so that he could educate her at home.

At Oxford, her father continued to be actively involved in her education, accompanying her to all lectures and some tutorials. Lawrence completed her bachelor's degree in two years, instead of the normal three, and graduated in 1985 at the age of 13 with a starred first and special commendation.

he had tried it once before - with an older daughter, Sarah, one of three children he had by a previous marriage.

That experiment ended after he separated from Sarah's increasingly concerned mother, Jutta. He soon found a woman more in tune with his radical ideas in his next spouse, Sylvia Greybourne