“I always knew there was a problem because it was difficult for me to read. “The letters were shuffled and still being made, but I thought I was not very good at the language,” he said. Despite his undiagnosed dyslexia, Hancock said: “I had my math and that led me to Oxford.” It was at university that a teacher noticed that while he was smart and could speak well his writing was not up to standard. He was then screened by the university and “learn again how to read” with the help of experts. The diagnosis was simply a relief to both Hancock and his parents. They always knew something was wrong, he said. He once asked his mother what the word “swan wood for sale” meant, in fact he wrote “sawn wood”. As soon as he was evaluated, he called them: “And they said, ‘Well, obviously!’ It was like a crossword puzzle, it’s obvious when someone gives you the answer. “
“Some total disasters”
However, even as an economist at the Bank of England, MP and then junior minister, Mr Hancock kept it a secret. Instead, he looked for ways to deal with his dyslexia without revealing it to anyone other than a few select colleagues, although he did not save him from “some total disaster.” In the 2001 general election, Mr. Hancock was campaigning for Nick St Aubyn, a Guildford MP at the time. Gathering a pamphlet to send to every home in Guilford, he selected St Aubyn’s phrase “I want to unite the community” and put it in large letters. Only after it was posted did anyone find out that I had actually written “I want to solve the community”. It was a disaster. It lost its seat with 400 votes “. Most of all, though, he found ways to get by. As a minister, for example, he would ask for a short one-page description for each stack of documents in his red box so that he could prioritize issues without being confused by slow reading. It was while asking for such help that Mr. Hancock said he finally realized he needed to be open about his dyslexia. As secretary of culture, his new private secretary told him that he too was dyslexic and that Mr Hancock had a duty to “get out there” and show dyslexic children and adults that they could still “reach the top”. The response, he said, was overwhelming and incredibly positive. This even led Brandon Lewis, the current Minister for Northern Ireland, to talk about his own dyslexia:
