School Stories

Inappropriate crying is something I do. I never squeeze out a drop at funerals and seldom at operas.

I cry inexplicably and yesterday morning had a tear-fest reading the OEA Review.

Although my school days were the least enjoyable of my life I’m happy to defend Eton; as Churchill might have said, the worst school but better than any other. It has taken a pasting recently. A House Master of nine years standing has been prosecuted for being too affectionate to his charges and other inappropriate behaviour. It beats me why it took nine years for this to come to light, indeed it beats me how he came to be appointed. Meanwhile another beak has been sacked for putting a thirty minute seminar on patriarchy on YouTube.

None of the above makes me lachrymose. What set me off was reading obituaries of beaks I remember, including my House Master (RHH). They are old fashioned teachers, many of whom had been to Eton – though RHH was at Winchester. In the old days you made your mark as a young master and were given a House list. That meant that parents could enrol their sons at birth, ready for the day twelve or thirteen years hence, when the trunk was loaded into the back of the estate car and the boy delivered to his House Master for a socially sticky tea party with the parents of other New Boys. Then a House Master reigned for some fifteen years before retiring somewhere he could afford a cottage.

In the same issue, the book about Michael Kidson is being turned into a play – perfect for the Jermyn Street Theatre; and a contemporary of mine has written a memoir about his unusual life. I look forward to both. This is a wedding present …