As a schoolboy in Manchester, his interest in engineering was fired when his father Ernie took him slot-car racing.
As a schoolboy, Johnston showed an interest in drawing, and in 1815 he was apprenticed to a successful Philadelphia engraver.
As a schoolboy, he displayed a keen interest in the stage and in literature, and his first poem was published in 1842.
Despite being a standout at schoolboy level, Thurston attracted no interest from NRL clubs, dismissing him as too small, too skinny … essentially, too breakable.
Running Hot, the novel published by Maggie Hamand and Jane Havell's independent press, Maia, is set in the streets of Hackney and surrounding areas, where "treading on someone's footwear could mean being permanently taken out of this life" and in which Elijah "Schoolboy" Campbell "always" takes "an interest in the death of former classmates".
And it would probably not be difficult to find a number of political figures who might feel they had a better right to run the country than a little known ex-schoolboy from Switzerland with an interest in basketball.
McCarron plays John McGill, a bright working-class schoolboy in 1970s Glasgow who loses interest in learning, grows estranged from his dysfunctional family and becomes embroiled in gang violence.
More recently, David Attenborough has admitted reading the book as a schoolboy and credits it with stimulating his interest in the natural world.
Telling the story of "the classic ocean of our imaginings" is a huge undertaking but Simon Winchester manages it with aplomb.To condense his subject into manageable chunks, Mr Winchester uses Shakespeare's seven ages of man as a structure: the infant is a metaphor for man's first interest in the ocean, the schoolboy represents its exploration, and so on.
And after learning of his prolific scoring exploits, including 132 goals in 32 games when he was just 13, the Premiership's big guns homed in on the England Schoolboys' forward, with Liverpool showing the biggest interest.
There were some, like Joan Fontaine in "Rebecca," who simply didn't much interest him; Hitchcock's dismissive attitude and schoolboy dirty jokes were the worst treatment they got.
