UK Cypriot Daisy Christodoulou is honoured with an OBE in the New honours list for her services to education Director of Education, No More
Marking. For services to Education
Daisy Christodoulou, the author of the enduringly popular Seven Myths of Education, as there’s something about her that feels as if she’s sprung from a Dickens novel.

Born in Whitechapel in east London during the recessions of the 1980s, her parents worked on her grandparents’ market stall, which for half a century sold handkerchiefs, until Kleenex and Sunday trading laws wiped them out.

Thankfully her dad – whose parents were Cypriot immigrants shortly before the second world war – could work as a “sparkie”, though he had to go back to college in the 90s to get his electrician’s qualifications, having traded without them. Her mother was a hairdresser, and later a counsellor – gaining a master’s degree from the University of Greenwich.

“So when people ask were you the first person in your family to go to university,” she laughs, “I wasn’t!”

Raised on a classic inner-city housing estate, Christodoulou’s accent sounds at any moment like it might invite you to Albert Square for a few pints at the Old Vic.

But after snaffling one of the final free places at a top London private school during the penultimate year of assisted places, Christodoulou went on to become a champion of University Challenge – winning more points than her three team mates combined and romping Warwick University home to its first ever win in the show’s 45-year history.

When she beat Oxford’s colleges on University Challenge was she secretly pleased she’d proven them all wrong? A very genuine laugh rings around the museum.

“Not at all. I had a good time at Warwick