A Classical Education was first published in 1985. It followed immediately after Still Life and is again autobiographical though of a somewhat more macabre hue. At the centre is a murder committed by a school friend of Richard Cobb's.

'What gives A Classical Education its fascination is the author's description of how he himself, a shy and introverted schoolboy from Tunbridge Wells, is drawn into a nightmarish melodrama from which it seems he was lucky to escape... this book is beautifully written'. Richard Ingrams, The Times