Fay Maschler

Bruising times

In a market town in Kent at the time of Thatcher’s Britain, Charles Pemberton attends the town’s minor public school where his businessman father is a governor.

issue 12 February 2011

In a market town in Kent at the time of Thatcher’s Britain, Charles Pemberton attends the town’s minor public school where his businessman father is a governor.

In a market town in Kent at the time of Thatcher’s Britain, Charles Pemberton attends the town’s minor public school where his businessman father is a governor. Back in the 1930s, his grandfather Clarence had had ‘the right idea’, which was to build an eight-foot wall across a residential road in Oxford to separate his family home from newly built council houses.

There is no such fortification available against the arrival at the school of Clark Rossiter, ‘a London chuck-out’ from a fringe estate, thanks to his sports scholarship, boxing being just one of his talents. ‘Large’, as he is soon admiringly known, storms the puny citadel and carries off Sophie Marchand, the maiden everyone desires.

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