Too scared to speak up? How to be more confident

Some people exude self-assurance, while others dread putting themselves forward. But is lack of confidence societal or genetic, and what tricks can we use to overcome it?

Above the entrance to Manchester Grammar School lies a coat of arms and a Latin inscription: "Sapere Aude". Ian Thorpe, then the school's development officer, translated it for me - "Dare to Be Wise" - as we stood in the front quad on a warm day last July. First used by the Roman poet Horace in his book of Epistles, the phrase was later employed by the philosopher Immanuel Kant: "Dare to know! 'Have the courage to use your own understanding' is " the motto of the enlightenment," he wrote. And it makes a fine motto, too, for a school that counts among its alumni the writer Thomas de Quincy and the director Nicholas Hytner.

Manchester Grammar is the largest all-boys day school in the country, and when I visited they were in the throes of summer sports' day: a loudspeaker reeled race results out across the grass, a large marquee stood by the track. There was, I felt, a sense of gentle splendour - there in the trees that line its long driveway, mature and broad-branched, and in the quad designed in the style of an Oxbridge college. Certainly, the school wants for little: it stands on a 28-acre site, has a history dating back to the early 16th century, and commands fees a little shy of 12,000 a year.