`The war was going on in England and there was always the hope that one of the bombs would be dropped on our school." Nearly all of his generation went to school in fear, recalls John McGahern. "There were no books in our house but I discovered them in the house of friends of my father, a family called Moroney . . . for about eight or nine years I would come every fortnight returning five or six books in my oilcloth shopping bag and taking five or six more away."

My Education, a satisfyingly fat paperback by radio producer John Quinn, comprises a series of radio interviews broadcast on RTE between 1991 and 1996. Told in the first person, each interview is almost a short story. Education is education in the fullest sense. School and teachers feature in some interviews. In others they hardly make an appearance.

Jean Vanier, founder of the L'Arche communities, talks of Pere Thomas, a man who brought together three elements - "a mystical element, a real union with Jesus leading into silence; a whole vision of metaphysics and theology; and also a vision of the needs of young people, particularly in the period after World War II . . . through these three elements I was nourished and formed intellectually, metaphysically and theologically and I was lead into a life of prayer."

Part of the charm of the book lies also in the eclectic selection of interviewees. Wedged between Naom Chomsky, the linguist and intellectual, and Mike Cooley, author of Architect or Bee?, Shirley Conran talks of an art teacher who asked her students to draw a pattern in two colours. "I drew a very simple pattern in pink and orange. She made me hold up my hands and she whacked them with a metal ruler to the tune of `pink and orange don't go, whack, whack, whack, whack.' I think that was the start of my rebellious streak. I notice my favourite designs and colour combinations are still pink and orange."

For Seamus Heaney, encountering Kavanagh's poetry was enormously important. "It was like a woman discovering women writers. I was converted and empowered and released into parts of myself through reading him."

Dr Cahal Daly talks of growing up in a family which often took dinner and food to homes where there was literally nothing. "We were always taught to have concern for others and never to waste food ourselves, because others would be glad to have what we left, and those lessons stayed with me. These were not formal lessons but they were part of the whole atmosphere which one breathed growing up in that home. One lived close to nature. One grew up with a great love of nature, the fruits and flowers of the field and the animals."

John Quinn has succeeded in turning his radio series into a delightful book. Definitely one for the Christmas stocking.

My Education was published last week by Town House Dublin and costs £12.99 (paperback).