Doris Evans looked through the compositions handed in by her class. They were, as usual, grubby, the cheap exercise books food-stained and dog-eared. Coal dust from the small hands made the texture of the paper gritty. Page after page of misspelt, blotched, childish dreams. Their subject was, ‘Choose a character from history, one you would like to have been.’

The stories were similar — in many cases too similar — and Doris suspected that Lizzie-Ann Griffiths had been making herself a few halfpennies. Ninety per cent of the girls from her class fancied being Gaiety Girls, but they all spelt it ‘Gayity’. Doris sighed and corrected the scrawled lines. So much for history.

Doris saved Evelyne Jones’ compositions until the very last. Neat, meticulous handwriting on clean, flat pages — the girl kept her notebook in a brown paper bag. At the top of the page Evelyne had printed the date, February 10th 1909, and the title: ‘I am Christina Georgina Rossetti’. Then in the same perfect handwriting the composition followed. The young girl discussed her love for her brothers, Dante Gabriel and William Michael, but what was so remarkable was that Evelyne had interwoven her feelings for her own brothers around her fictional self. She compared her own family’s education to that of the Rossettis. It caught the teacher’s imagination. Doris was taken aback at the depth of feeling and Evelyne’s sophisticated use of the English language. She wrote about what it was like to be part of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. Evelyne was ten years old.