Where other people have smothering parents and teenage dates, the men of Britain’s ruling class have traditionally had boarding school. Cold showers, constant beatings, the ambiguous privilege of “fagging” (whereby younger boys dance attention on older ones), have all provided endless material for George Orwell, Cyril Connolly, Anthony Powell. So potent is the lifelong spell of School that Graham Greene remained haunted by it even while spying in West Africa; John le Carré, when describing intrigues during the Cold War.
Into their company now steps Charles Spencer, with a furious and heartfelt assault on Maidwell Hall, the exclusive private school where he was interned from the ages of 8 to 13. Like many of his contemporaries, he remembers little of the place other than sexual abuse and a host of “vicious sadists,” who left scars on the buttocks and the souls of their former pupils, still visible 40 years on.
