Graham Greene

“I remember distinctly the suddenness with which a key turned in the lock and I found I could read -not just the sentences in a reading book with the syllables coupled like railway carriages, but a real book. It was paper-covered with the picture of a boy, bound and gagged, dangling at the end of a rope inside a well with the water rising above his waist- an adventure of Dixon Brett, detective. All a long summer holiday I kept my secret as I believed: I didn’t want anybody to know that I could read. I suppose I half consciously realised even then that this was the dangerous moment”

Graham Greene, The Lost Childhood and Other Essays