Stiff Upper Lip
Secrets, Crimes and the Schooling of a Ruling Class
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4.1 • 7 Ratings
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- £2.99
Publisher Description
'A brave and necessary book' GUARDIAN
'Shocking, gripping and sobering' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
No other society sends its young boys and girls away to school to prepare them for a role in the ruling class.
Beating, bullying, fagging, cold baths, vile food and paedophile teachers are just some of the features of this elite education, and, while some children loved boarding school, others now admit to suffering life-altering psychological damage. Stiff Upper Lip exposes the hypocrisy, cronyism and conspiracy that are key to understanding the scandals over abuse and neglect in institutions all over the world.
Award-winning investigative journalist Alex Renton went to three traditional boarding schools. Drawing on those experiences, and the vivid testimony of hundreds of former pupils, he has put together a compelling history, important to anyone wondering what shaped the people who run Britain in the twenty-first century.
Customer Reviews
Hell of a read
Fascinating account of the weird rituals that the British elite subjected - still subject - their children to… it explains a lot. Gripping, awful and sometimes bizarrely comic. It makes you glad to be born far from the silver spoons.
The fact that Rennton went through the mills for producing leaders that he describes lends much weight - and he tells it pretty briskly too. Read this if you watch Downton Abbey, British politics or you’re intrigued by the massive self-belief that drives the class that still runs modern Britain.