“Fiction? Autobiography? If the latter, I can’t imagine anyone admitting ‘Cranchester’ was the school he attended, let alone dare admit to membership of Ansell’s.”
“….terrifyingly credible; far, far too realistic and sexually explicit to be televisable, even in 2005.”
“….thoroughly uncomfortable memories for those who were away at school during the Second World War.”
“…as the ‘education’ of the protagonists is meticulously explored in convincing detail, it becomes clear that corruption within this claustrophobic environment is mirrored by that in the outside world. Or is engendered by it?”
“….a curious quirk of the British upper and upper middle-class that they subject their children to be educated more intensively by the children of their own contemporaries, rather than the masters who are paid to teach them in the class-room.”
“….although terms like ‘peer-pressure’ and ‘child abuse’ may have been unknown in 1941, the facts speak for themselves…”