"In my teens, I developed a passionate idolatry for a teacher of English literature. I wanted to do something that he would approve of more, so I thought I should be some sort of a scholar"
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Idolatry is a risky word here, and Trevor Nunn uses it on purpose: it admits to a kind of adolescent surrender, the moment when taste isn’t yet “mine” so much as borrowed from the first adult who makes art feel like a private door. Nunn’s line sketches an origin story for a director, but it’s not the usual “I always knew” myth. It’s a confession that ambition can begin as devotion, even mimicry.
The intent is quietly double-edged. On the surface, it’s gratitude toward a teacher who made English literature feel incandescent. Underneath, it’s an account of how approval becomes a compass. “I wanted to do something that he would approve of” reveals a teenage economy of validation: talent is less a calling than a bid to stay in the light of someone you revere. The phrase “some sort of a scholar” adds a telling vagueness, as if the role was chosen more for its moral and cultural prestige than any clear understanding of what scholars actually do.
Context matters: Nunn came up in postwar Britain, where literature carried institutional weight and “scholar” suggested both class mobility and seriousness. For a future theater director, that seriousness is the point. He’s describing the early training of his sensibility: a desire to be worthy of a demanding reader. The subtext is that directing, at its best, is still that adolescent gesture refined - making choices in public that would satisfy a private standard, even after the teacher is long gone.
The intent is quietly double-edged. On the surface, it’s gratitude toward a teacher who made English literature feel incandescent. Underneath, it’s an account of how approval becomes a compass. “I wanted to do something that he would approve of” reveals a teenage economy of validation: talent is less a calling than a bid to stay in the light of someone you revere. The phrase “some sort of a scholar” adds a telling vagueness, as if the role was chosen more for its moral and cultural prestige than any clear understanding of what scholars actually do.
Context matters: Nunn came up in postwar Britain, where literature carried institutional weight and “scholar” suggested both class mobility and seriousness. For a future theater director, that seriousness is the point. He’s describing the early training of his sensibility: a desire to be worthy of a demanding reader. The subtext is that directing, at its best, is still that adolescent gesture refined - making choices in public that would satisfy a private standard, even after the teacher is long gone.
Quote Details
| Topic | Teacher Appreciation |
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