Married to a public-school man (I almost said boy) for many a long year, I can’t bring myself to disqualify politicians for that crime alone. But during last week’s party leaders’ debates I did detect the tang of the Shell, as I think they call upper forms at Westminster, when I heard Nick Clegg say to Ed Miliband: ‘I will leave that pious stuff.’ It echoed from Tom Brown’s Schooldays (at Rugby) long ago or that weird novel The Hill (Harrow).
Mr Clegg’s cosmopolitan background looks resistant to establishment conventions, yet, for that very reason, he takes some on board without noticing. It is no coincidence that the Westminster term beginning in April is called Election Term. Well, it may be a coincidence, but another one is that the examination for scholarships is called the Challenge, which used to be entirely oral, with candidates interrupting or challenging each speaker.
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