 In 1896 Somerset Walpole discovered his son 's horror of the Marlow school and he moved him to the King 's School , Canterbury . For two years he was a fairly content , though undistinguished , pupil there . In 1897 Walpole senior was appointed principal of Bede College , Durham , and Hugh was moved again , to be a day boy for four years at Durham School . He found that day boys were looked down on by <unk> , and that Bede College was the subject of <unk> within the university . His sense of isolation increased . He continually took refuge in the local library , where he read all the novels of Jane Austen , Henry Fielding , Scott and Dickens and many of the works of Trollope , <unk> Collins and Henry Kingsley . Walpole wrote in 1924 : 
