School Boy Life in England


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English Schoolboy Stories


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A surprising number of classic English authors wrote school stories, from Mary Shelley and Maria Edgeworth through Evelyn Waugh and Stephen Spender. Coverage spans two centuries of fiction set in the endowed private schools called Public Schools in England. Famous works such as Tom Brown's Schooldays by Hughes and Stalky & Co. by Kipling are described, along with books of accomplished but lesser-known writers such as Charles Turley, Eden Phillpotts, Talbot Baines Reed, and Desmond Coke. In addition to their pure entertainment value, these novels preserve a wealth of cultural information: class attitudes, sexual development, sports history, consciousness of Empire, role of the Established Church, study of the Classics. Biographical sketches are provided for most of the authors.




Sad Little Men


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'Read this book' Alastair Campbell 'A really wonderful book' Nigella Lawson via Twitter In 1975 Richard Beard was sent away to boarding school. So were Boris Johnson and David Cameron. He didn't enjoy it. But the first and most important lesson was not to let that show. A public school education has long been accepted in Britain as a preparation for leadership, but being separated from your parents at a young age is traumatic. What sort of adult does it mould? Tackling debates about privilege head-on, Sad Little Men reveals what happens when you put a succession of men from boarding schools into positions of influence, including at 10 Downing Street, and asks the question- is this really who we want in charge? 'The most important book I've read this year' Adam Rutherford




Tudor School-boy Life


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Posh Boys


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‘The latest in the series of powerful books on the divisions in modern Britain, and will take its place on many bookshelves beside Reni Eddo-Lodge’s Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race and Owen Jones’s Chavs.’ –Andrew Marr, Sunday Times ‘In his fascinating, enraging polemic, Verkaik touches on one of the strangest aspects of the elite schools and their product’s domination of public life for two and a half centuries: the acquiescence of everyone else.’ –Observer In Britain today, the government, judiciary and military are all led by an elite who attended private school. Under their watch, our society has become increasingly divided and the gap between rich and poor is now greater than ever before. Is this the country we want to live in? If we care about inequality, we have to talk about public schools. Robert Verkaik issues a searing indictment of the system originally intended to educate the most underprivileged Britons, and outlines how, through meaningful reform, we can finally make society fairer for all.




The Queen of England and the Unknown Schoolboy - Part 1


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This year (2022) has seen the sad death of the late Queen of England and this Christmas will be the first Christmas without her and her globally famous Queen's Speech at Christmas. This very timely book is a true story and work of faction that is written retrospectively, remembering the Queen of England and what she meant to a great many of her fans and also school children in the UK when she first came to her throne in 1952. England and its new Queen were on a very different planet, as they were likewise in 1953 when she became the first British monarch to let the television cameras into her life and become Britain's Television Queen thereby on a second parallel planet. These were 1950s planets that have now disappeared, or are fast disappearing, into the mists of time, as has the unforgettable Queen Elizabeth II. The story told in these pages is a very surprising, interesting and historically significant factional narrative. It's not only for the fans of the late Queen who is still fresh in their minds and with a place in their hearts during this first Christmas without her, but also for history buffs, students and lecturers of history and/or literature, lay-readers and bookworms and perhaps even republicans who monitor these affairs. The narrative is for all who like to touch social and royal history and get the feel of its handshake, written by one of the few authors remaining today who saw the Queen of England in at her televised coronation in 1953. He has now seen her out again this year in his twilight years at her massively televised lying in state and state funeral. It's a most extraordinary tale of social history and also of an unknown family's history and education, revealing how Queen Elizabeth related to and influenced her people when she first came to her throne. There were very different values and attitudes of mind and characters back then, when her fans were very different people indeed. Bob Crew is an author of several factual books who is also a former correspondent of The Times and Financial Times newspapers in London, as well as a graduate of the University of London, of which today's patron is Princess Anne. There really are few books of fact or fiction like this one, the story of which is chiefly about an unknown schoolboy and his family during the new reign of Queen Elizabeth II, as she and the 1950s history in question here cast its shadow over them all.







Child Welfare


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Building Character in the American Boy


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Among established American institutions, few have been more successful or paradoxical than the Boy Scouts of America. David Macleod traces the social history of America in this scholarly account of the origins of the Boy Scouts and other character-building agencies, through which adults tried to restructure middle-class boyhood. Back in print; First paperback edition.