To many, the opportunities offered by a boarding school education in Britain seem unfair – giving a child an advantage in life simply because their well-to-do parents have the meansto buy it for them. These schools appear to have come a long way from the institutions I and my brother and sister knew in the 1970s. Times have changed. Would I want to relive that period of my life? Absolutely not. Have these schools learned from their past mistakes? More than likely.
The photo accompanying this blog is the actual view from my bedroom ‘cubicle,’ although the curtain is an improvement on the flimsy rag from my day. We had identical cubicles, with some facing into the garden, and some, like mine, facing onto the wall of the bathroom block. This was a far cry from the rose gardens and tree-lined drive my bedroom window faced onto at home, which only accentuated my distance from everything that I loved. By comparison, I give you the view from my bedroom window.
There is a growing number of charities and groups dealing with the fallout in adulthood caused by the abandonment of children at boarding school. I never felt abandoned at the time, as I had no sense of what a normal family life might be like. Mine seemed to me as normal as it gets.
I attended a conference in London at the beginning of this month, organised by Boarding School Concern. I found myself among a group of people who all understood each other, although for some the repercussions of their childhood experience was harder and more difficult when compared to my own. In one workshop, I sat next to a lovely lady who had been sent away to school at just four years of age.
It was curiosity that led me to the conference. What I heard and saw has convinced me that my memoir, Peacock on the Moon, offers valuable insights into how the type of education I received comes at a cost. Parents sent their children away at an age when they still enjoyed being read bedtime stories, and what came back at the end of it all was a person on the verge of adulthood – a person they barely knew.
My visit to the 2025 conference in London has convinced me that my draft second book, covering my boarding school years insofar as they are outside the remit of the current memoir, will likely be of equal interest to readers as this first one.