Purge of the posh

Any parents considering Dollar Academy are invited to take their car along its long driveway and park outside what looks like a palace. When I first did so with my parents, I told them that it all looked ridiculously posh. My mum flew into a rage. ‘Posh’ was a word of bigotry, she said, and one I’d best not use if I was going to survive a day in boarding school. My dad left school aged 15 and eventually joined the RAF, which was kindly paying for me to board while he was posted to Cyprus. He’d have loved such an opportunity, and wanted me to see it for what it was — and to forget any class-war language that I might have picked up in my old comprehensive in the Highlands.

I needn’t have worried. The stonkingly rich tended to avoid this (then) relatively low-budget school. The boarders tended to be the sons of farmers, traditionally sent to live away from home for a few years before going back and settling down.