Charles, Earl Spencer published a blistering denunciation of his prep school days – complete with constant corporal punishment and child abuse – in A Very Private School last month. Since then, many of us who attended such places have been recalling our own time there too, nodding in recognition or giving thanks that our experience was better.
From 1978 to 1983, I was at such a boarding school myself, in Suffolk. Presumably prep schools have changed a lot since then, but in the late 70s they were still brutal, spartan places. You wore shorts in all weathers, studied and slept with the windows open, and spent your life longing for an extra blanket or a few special minutes by the radiator. Teachers, who called you only by your surname, were allowed to beat, pull hair and torment at will.
Our parents would have been powerless to do anything about it, and perhaps incapable even of voicing a protest
Sleeping on prison-style beds with U-shaped horsehair mattresses, we shared a dormitory with up to a dozen, often feral, fellow pupils, whose snores, farts and other nocturnal emissions tortured our sleep.
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