 Hordern was 14 when he left Windlesham House to continue his schooling as a member of Chichester House at Brighton College. By the time he joined the college, his interest in acting had matured. In his 1993 autobiography, A World Elsewhere, he admitted: "I didn 't excel in any area apart from singing; I couldn't read music but I sang quite well." There he helped organise amateur performances of various Gilbert and Sullivan operas. The first of these was The Gondoliers, in which he played the role of the Duchess. The tutors called his performance a great success, and he was given a position within the men's chorus in the next piece, Iolanthe. Over the next few years, he took part in The Mikado as a member of the chorus, and then appeared as the Major-General in The Pirates of Penzance. It was a period which he later acknowledged as being the start of his career. When the war ended in 1918, Edward, who was by now a port officer in Calcutta, arranged for Margaret to return to England. With her, she brought home an orphaned baby girl named Jocelyn, whom she adopted. The following year, Edward retired from active service and returned to England where he relocated his family to Haywards Heath in Sussex. There, Michael developed a love for fishing, a hobby about which he remained passionate for the rest of his life.
