School trips go global

To an older generation a school trip was something to be endured as much as enjoyed. It meant an expedition to peer at frogspawn in Epping Forest or, for the recklessly profligate, maybe a coach to Skegness. Over recent decades, however, as top schools have raised their fees in line with the international oligarchy’s ability to pay them, school trips have come to resemble the work of chichi travel agents. Designed to build character, they now build air miles.

The trend was already well under way when I was at school in the austere early noughties. Twice a year we went on ‘expeditions’. Some were to the traditional sodden youth hostels in Wales, but there were also such tests of young manhood as ‘swimming in the south of France’ and ‘culture break in Marrakech’. Good preparations for life, if the life you have in mind is that of an ageing gay aristocrat from an Alan Hollinghurst novel.