I was six before I began learning to read, admits Callow

Actor, author and theatre director Simon Callow has revealed he didn't start to learn to read until he was six.

At a reading of his new book, Charles Dickens and the Great Theatre of the World, Callow, 62, said he was taught by the headteacher's mother at a school where his own mother was secretary. "I wasn't a student - I was there because of my mother, and this old lady taught me how to read. I immediately couldn't be kept away from print."

Callow, at Jarndyce Antiquarian Booksellers in Bloomsbury for the reading last night, endorsed the Standard's literacy campaign. His family "were not great readers in terms of knowing the great peaks of literature", he said. "But they respected writing greatly and knew words brought you power." He added: "Reading is one of the great many tools of human life, it gives you power, inner connectedness to worlds created by other writers, and it's your very own personal experience."