Just learned that Tilda Swinton and Diana Spencer were in the same class at West Heath Girls School, a boarding school near Sevenoaks in Kent

Tilda Swinton remembered boarding school as a very lonely place.

West Heath Girls School was a prestigious, though not first-rank, private school for girls. In the mid-1970s boarding there cost some £1,500 to £2,000 a year, which in those days placed the school within reach of well-off families only. Although it is written that the quality of education at the school left much to be desired, so that in the end pupils began to drift away and the establishment even had to be closed. Diana did not serve out her whole term there, though she had no particular thirst for knowledge in any case: it was no accident that she twice failed her O-level examinations, today's GCSEs, and as a result, in all likelihood, did not even obtain a school certificate.

Tilda, that is Katherine Matilda Swinton, comes from an old Scottish aristocratic family. The Swintons can be traced in documents back to the thirteenth century and are numbered among the oldest noble families of Scotland. The actress's father, Sir John Swinton, was an officer in the British Army and bore the hereditary title of baronet.