ABSTRACT
My reading of the Auld Report took place some twenty years later in the summer of 1996. The report was the product of an extended Public Inquiry which highlighted the dilemmas and power struggles of those that had been drawn into the conflict at William Tyndale School. It is still-as Virginia Bottomley said so many years ago-a gripping tale: an account of a complex and painful story which unfolded over a period of eighteen months or so, and touched the lives of many people. As with any good detective novel, or Shakespearean tragedy, the intensity of the drama causes the reader to ask the ‘if only’ questions. ‘If only’ we ask, as we read ‘Romeo and Juliet’, the Italian postal system had been efficient. ‘If only’ Friar Lawrence had been more decisive. ‘If only’ Juliet had woken up a little sooner.
