Books in Brief: The Old School Tie

The Old School Tie, by Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy (Viking, 480 pp., $17.95). Subtitled The Phenomenon of the English Public School, Mr. Gathorne-Hardy’s huge study of that country’s private schools is quite brilliant. It is all there—the history, the horrors, and the deep love such schools inspired in their old lags (see Sir Lawrence Jones’s golden memoirs). Originally clerical in intention, these foundations grew into training camps for the administrative class of the new colonies, and the army. The caste systems, as photos in this book show, became more baroque than any in India. The canings were unbelievable—it was years before I could hear the code words “I’ll see you later” without a shudder—but always carried out with a positively aesthetic ceremony (as seen in the film If, based on Tunbridge). Mr. Gathorne-Hardy covers everything (perhaps too much), except the appalling food we had, which no American child would have stomached. He concludes with a survey of English girls’ schools on the boys’ model, but does them far less justice. The Headmistress of Cheltenham Ladies College (alumnae including Iris Murdoch and Indira Gandhi) paraded her entire school before her to examine whether each girl was wearing the regulation knicker under her tunic— not in 1859 but 1959.

GW

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Geoffrey Wagner

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The Old School Tie, by Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy (Viking, 480 pp., $17.95). Subtitled The Phenomenon of the English Public School, Mr. Gathorne-Hardy’s huge study of that country’s private schools is quite brilliant. It is all there—the history, the horrors, and the deep love such schools inspired in their old lags (see Sir Lawrence Jones’s golden memoirs). Originally clerical in intention, these foundations grew into training camps for the administrative class of the new colonies, and the army. The caste systems, as photos in this book show, became more baroque than any in India. The canings were unbelievable—it was years before I could hear the code words “I’ll see you later” without a shudder—but always carried out with a positively aesthetic ceremony (as seen in the film If, based on Tunbridge). Mr. Gathorne-Hardy covers everything (perhaps too much), except the appalling food we had, which no American child would have stomached. He concludes with a survey of English girls’ schools on the boys’ model, but does them far less justice. The Headmistress of Cheltenham Ladies College (alumnae including Iris Murdoch and Indira Gandhi) paraded her entire school before her to examine whether each girl was wearing the regulation knicker under her tunic— not in 1859 but 1959.