"If I took you to a country where they were reading Sanskrit and I was writing that on the board - well anyone would behave badly - how bored would you be when you tried to follow it and all you could understand was the odd word, " says Mr Ryan.

BBC: NEWS | UK | Education | Teachers reflect on disciplining

The well-off, the artistic, the bored, the adventurous went abroad. (The broad masses went too, as empires, steamships and railways made travel cheaper and easier.) Foreignness was a means of escape physical, psychological and moral.

ECONOMIST: Being foreign