The Loom of Youth

by Alec Waugh

And if the modern reader after turning a page or two finds his attention held and wants to go on reading it will mean that this book has become at last what in fact it was always meant to be—a realistic but romantic story of healthy adolescence set against the background of an average English Public School.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, 20th Century, LGBT, British Literature, Boarding School, Novels

First published January 1, 1917

About the author

Born Alexander Raban Waugh to Arthur Waugh, author, literary critic, and publisher. He was the elder brother of the better-known Evelyn Waugh. His third wife was Virginia Sorenson, author of the Newbery Medal-winning Miracles on Maple Hill.

Waugh was educated at Sherborne School, a public school in Dorset, from where he was expelled. The result of his experiences was his first, semi-autobiographical novel, The Loom of Youth (1917), clearly inspired by The Harrovians (1931) by Arnold Lunn, and so controversial at the time (it openly mentioned homosexual activities between boys) that Waugh remains the only former pupil to be expelled from the old boys society (The Old Shirburnian Society). It was also a best seller.

Waugh went on to a career as a successful author, although never as successful or innovative as his younger brother. He lived much of his life overseas, in exotic places such as Tangier - a lifestyle made possible by his second marriage, to a rich Australian. His 1957 novel Island in the Sun was a best-seller, as was his 1973 novel, A Fatal Gift.

He also published In Praise of Wine & Certain Noble Spirits (1959), an amusing and discursive guide to the major wine types, and Wines and Spirits , a 1968 book in the Time-Life series Foods of the World.

Waugh is said to have invented the cocktail party when active in the 1920s London social life and served rum swizzles to astonished friends who thought they had come for tea. Within eighteen months, early evening drinks had become a widespread social entertainment.

Waugh also has a footnote in the history of reggae music. The success of the film adaptation of Island in the Sun and the Harry Belafonte title track provided inspiration as well as the name for the highly successful Island Records record label.
(Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Perry Whitford · Rating 4 out of 5]

Semi-autobiographical novel about life at an English Public School in the years leading up to WWI, written by a seventeen year old Waugh when he had only just left his alma mater, Sherborne.

This book was controversial in its time for lifting the lid on the bullying, idleness, and homosexuality inherent in the Public School system, though these revelations were mild and déclassé long before today, as the author recognised in his introduction to a 1954 reprinting:

'The modern reader will find nothing here to shock or startle him. Several years ago a friend was reading the book in my company. "When do I reach the scene?" he asked. I looked over his shoulder. "You've passed it, ten pages back," I told him.'

For those unfamiliar with the game of rugby, the phrase 'a good deal of fisting in the scrum' is not the aforementioned scene above. In fact, in the two or three places where the homosexual activities of the pupils are referred to, it is in a routinely offhand manor, just another tradition among many traditions.

Indeed as Waugh's experiences make plain, tradition was the backbone of the entire Public School system. Caning, cribbing, fagging, ragging, soft masters and merciless prefects - conformity was king and ability at games the means to a coronation.

Waugh's surrogate, Gordan Caruthers, is torn between desire to distinguish himself on the field and differentiate himself in the school house. He constantly rebels, yet constantly craves the admiration of even the most reactionary masters, such as the "Bull".

But he can't break the mould. Like most of the Public School boys I came into contact with, he is an arrogant, egotistical, loathsome oink of the first water, a craven little toerag adorned in the tinsel of a classical education.

If this novel would have been written by a fully-fledged adult I would have detested it beyond endurance. Caruthers is so earnestly, astonishingly self-important as to beggar belief in one so young and ignorant.

But it wasn't written by an adult. It was written by a teenager, fresh out of the system that produced (and still produces) such wretched specimens of entitled youth.

And because of that, I really liked it.

Because of that, instead of being disgusted at the extraordinary calowness of Caruthers - who more than once compared his miniscule struggles with those of Caesar - I was amused by it.

Honestly, just by reading the chapter headings alone you would be forgiven for thinking that three years at a Public School was equivalent to the trials of Hercules, its hilarious.

But then again, to a seventeen year old, who had known nothing of the real world before he wrote this thinly veiled confession, his time at the school would have been his whole life up to that point.

I was a teenager too at many moons ago, and though I couldn't quote Horace and never had any younger boys to carry my books around for me, I was every bit as much a self-important ass as Caruthers.

Well, perhaps not every bit as much. You had to go to Public School to be this detestable.

[Robert Dunbar · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book needs a glossary. Toad-in-the-hole turns out not to be a sexual posture.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

For years I wished--how I wished!--that I had been able, as a small lad, to attend Eton College. Many were the tears I shed as I reflected that I would never be able to "rag" on the smaller boys, be beaten by the Headmaster, or play the hallowed Eton Wall Game.

Instead my shiftless parents sent me to lower-case public schools, where I learned how to vandalize things, and, after a great struggle, to name 18 of the 26 letters of the alphabet. But I learned nothing of the nobility of the human spirit, for no such spirit dwelt within the cinder-block walls of my schools. "Eton! Eton!" I would cry, anguished, each night as I lay in my bed. "Oh that I were there! How wonderful life should be!"

Then I read The Loom of Youth, set at a thinly veiled Eton in the years directly before WWI. And at last I was able to drink in the spirit of the Public School Man. Such honor! Such magnanimity! Such bullying, presented by the author as humorous! Such a dashing disrespect of scholarship! I may not have attended Eton, but with the help of this book I hope to pontificate as naively and to condescend to women and minorities as affably as a Old Etonian! Highly recommend.

[Sarah (Presto agitato) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alec Waugh (older brother of the more famous Evelyn) wrote this semi-autobiographical novel about a fictional British public school over a six week period when he was 17 years old and doing military training during World War I. It's a school story in the tradition of Tom Brown's Schooldays, but updated for the pre-war generation. Unlike Tom Brown, The Loom of Youth contains several pointed criticisms of the public school system. It was controversial at the time for those criticisms, and also for the discussion of homosexual activity between schoolboys. That discussion was enough to get Waugh kicked out of his school's "old boy" alumni club after the book was published, but to a modern reader it's more in the vein of blink-and-you-miss-it (I did miss it - I was into the next chapter before I realized what they had been talking about).

The story is light on plot and heavy on cricket and rugby football. I will admit that the cricket and rugby went way over my American head. The story meanders a bit (Waugh tells us in the preface that he sent it chapter by chapter to his publisher father for proofreading and never did any revisions). The characters, however, are engaging and the story entertaining.

Waugh's protagonist struggles with ambivalence, enjoying his school days but recognizing the flawed system's inability to prepare him for life afterwards. As the characters draw closer to war, these concerns about educational quality become more pertinent. The schoolmasters urge on the boys, asking how they can expect to do well fighting in the trenches if they don't take football seriously enough. With the hindsight of knowing what history will bring, these situations are unsettling, but the characters (and probably the author as well, who had not yet been to the front when he wrote this) seem to have just a glimmer of what's in store for them and their generation. The mood of the novel is lighthearted overall, depicting a very particular place and time with a generation on the eve of war, but not yet colored much by it.

[Micha · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was smitten with this book. If you enjoy a general book about the life of an early 1900's school boy, look no further. It doesn't have a great amount of plot or anything, concerning itself with detailing the passage of a public school boy, but I thought it was lovely all the same. Lots of cricket and footer, lots of cribbing on their translations, private things in private studies, lots of believable boy characters getting sent down, beat up, winning house caps and house games. It's another of those novels ridiculous in its absolute Britishness, published by Alec Waugh, Evelyn's older brother, at the age of 17. It was a best-seller.

[Mac]

A semi-autobiographical story/account of the English Public School system that could only be written by someone simultaneously nostalgic for his time at the school and bemoaning the disillusionment with the system experienced near the end of his time there. The sheer level of detail seems to be shaped by Waugh’s nostalgia. It’s so detailed, in fact, that it reaches the point of monotony, especially when it comes to the recounts of all the sporting matches. This makes for a bit of a slow read, but again, I get the sense that this amount of detail only comes from a place of sentimentality. The characters are also all overly concerned with sports, which may explain its heavy focus, as well.

The accounts of daily life are interspersed with explicit critiques of the school system, and it’s interesting to see these alongside each other. Considering this was written before Waugh entered the army, all the mixed feelings make sense. Nostalgic for “simpler” times while reflecting on all the failings of the school’s culture and the school system, itself. Lamenting the time lost focusing on inconsequential schoolwork, pranks, sports, house loyalties, etc., now to be sent to the trenches. Reckoning with the system meant to set you up to be a successful adult, and “coming of age” at a time when it’s more likely that you’ll never even reach adulthood.

[Dr G · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have some vague memory of having heard of The Loom of Youth in the distant past. However, it had completely passed out of my consciousness until I read by Alec Waugh’s great nephew, Alexander Waugh.
The latter book described some of the fuss caused by the publication of the former book. Alec wrote it shortly after he was “asked” to leave the school and I must say that it is a pretty impressive piece of writing for someone of that age (seventeen when he wrote it; nineteen when it was published), both in the style and in the sustained story.
The school in the book is Fernhurst and the protagonist is Gordon Caruthers but apparently the name changes were not enough to deceive anyone.
However, one of the weaker elements is that the book gives every indication of being a pretty true-to-life account of Alec’s time at Sherborne School. That leads to some tiresomely detailed accounts of football and cricket matches, and selection injustices; and there is a fair amount of lightly disguised self-justification. And Alec’s father, Arthur who became so close to the school that he was virtually re-living his childhood through his son’s time there, was horrified when he read the book because it was so easy to identify the originals of the book’s characters, and many of the incidents.
I suppose Alec Waugh’s achievement is also slightly diminished by the fact that a tell-all book about Harrow, Arnold Lunn’s The Harrovians had been published just three years earlier and, indeed, Waugh refers to it and has Gordon discuss its reception. So the tell-all aspect was no longer a novelty.
Given that Waugh was expelled and this was as a result of being discovered larking about, naked, with a younger boy, the school would certainly have been apprehensive of what he was likely to write.
In the event, he was much less critical and much less explicit than might have been feared. In fact, two of the individuals who responded most negatively were the Head and the sports master, both of whom Waugh greatly respected while at the school and dealt with with some reverence in the book.
I suspect that their criticisms had been partly formed before they read it, when they feared the worst, and that they saw the book as being a betrayal of their community, in which loyalty to the team was promoted as one of the highest values.
The first thing to say is that homosexuality is dealt with in the most discreet manner. There are a small number of instances where one boy vacates his study to leave its other occupant alone with someone else. About the most explicit section is in relation to Gordon: “Thus began a friendship entirely different from any Gordon had known before. He did not know what his real sentiments were; he did not even attempt to analyse them. He only knew that when he was with Morcombe he was indescribably happy. There was something in him so natural, so unaffected, so sensitive to beauty. After this Morcombe came up to Gordon’s study nearly every evening, and usually Foster left them alone together, and went off in search of Collins.”
Hardly sensational!
Of Fernhurst’s Head, the narrator explains that “It was not till years later that Gordon came to understand the depth of unselfish idealism that burned behind the quiet modesty of the Chief; but even at first sight the least impressionable boy was conscious of being under the influence of an unusual personality. There was nothing of the theatrical pedagogue about him; he surrounded himself with no trappings of a proud authority. His voice was gentle and persuasive; his smile as winning almost as a child's.”
Gordon’s attitude to the games master, Buller, is slightly more ambivalent, mainly because they are in conflict from time to time, but Gordon admired "the Bull" immensely: indeed, "the Bull" was about the only person at Fernhurst whose opinion he valued at all.” (apart from the Chief, presumably.)
This is not to say that Waugh is entirely uncritical of Fernhurst/Sherborne. Probably the most interesting element of the book is when Waugh moves past the sporting competitions and the house spirit discussions, and provides an intelligent seventeen year old’s perspective on Edwardian private education
Despite Gordon’s (and Alec’s) prowess at games, the book suggests that far too much importance is placed on them. Soon after Gordon arrives at the school he hears several boys discussing whether another’s behaviour “goes too far���: "What the hell do you mean? Meredith go too far? Why, he is a splendid wicket-keeper, and far and away the finest half-back in the school. You must allow a good deal to a blood like him.” As an older boy, Gordon himself takes to oratory: “We can see games as they really are without any false mist of sentiment, and we can see that for years we have been worshipping something utterly wrong."
In fact many of the principles upon which the school is built are suggested to be inappropriate. “it loves mediocrity, it likes to be accepted unquestioningly as was the Old Testament. But times change. The Old Testament and the Public School system are now both of them in the melting-pot of criticism.” “Masters try to make you imitate, and not think for yourself. 'Mould your Latin verses on Vergil, your Greek prose on Thucydides, your English on Matthew Arnold, but don't think for yourself. Don't be original.'”
Finally, “It is inclined to destroy individuality, to turn out a fixed pattern; it wishes to take everyone, no matter what his tastes or ideas may be, and make him conform to its own ideals. In the process, much good is destroyed, for the Public School man is slack, easy-going, tolerant, is not easily upset by scruples, laughs at good things, smiles at bad, yet he is a fine follower. He has learnt to do what he is told; he takes life as he sees it and is content.”
These are criticisms which could probably be levelled at a good many independent schools today, so it seems likely they were valid then. At the same time, they would not be welcomed by the leadership of a school, especially when their author had been expelled for immorality. Even when a qualification is included: “It is, of course, very easy to run down any existing system; and the Public School system has come in for its fair share of abuse. Yet it must be remembered that no one has yet been able to devise a better. So far so good. With the average individual the system is not so very unsatisfactory.”
Equally difficult for the leadership to take would the suggestion that many of the masters were either incompetent or uncommitted to quality in their work: One was “a dry humorist, who had adopted schoolmastering for want of something better to do, had apparently regretted it afterwards, and developed into a cynic.” Another “had won his Blue for golf at Oxford, and had got a Double First. He also was quite incapable of teaching anything. His form made no pretence of keeping order.” And "most of them here have got into a groove. They believe the things they ought to believe; they are all copies of the same type. They've clean forgotten what it was like at school. Hardly any of them really know boys.”
“The really brilliant men don't take up schoolmastering; it is the worst paid profession there is. Look at it, a man with a double-first at Oxford comes down to a place like Fernhurst and sweats his guts out day and night for two hundred pounds a year. Of course, the big men try for better things. Rogers is just the sort of fool who would be a schoolmaster. He has got no brain, no intellect, he loves jawing”. And when a man with a good brain, such as “the Chief”, enters the profession, he is quickly promoted out of the classroom. A comment which is still commonly made today. And when Waugh wrote all this, he had been so recently in the school, that his father could identify immediately all the Sherborne staff and boys who were being described.
There are other, less quintessential criticisms scattered through the book: the school naively thinks boys are pure of mind and word; there is a belief that a code of honour operates such that miscreants will immediately confess; English Literature ought to be taught more systematically; it was common behaviour for lazy or less able boys to have their work prepared for them, and to be graded on the basis of their plagiarism; prefects are assumed to be paragons of senior leadership but take advantage of their trust, and game the system; and boisterous behaviour often was really bullying.
It is arguable that the best medium for school stories of the The Loom of Youth genre is the old 1950s comic books, Knockout and the like. And the best audience is juveniles: the space that was taken up by J.K. Rowling with Harry Potter. I have read a few such books over the years and The Loom of Youth stands up reasonably well. However I suspect it is flawed by the youth and solipsism of the author. It was something of a sensation at the time and became even more so when both Alec and his father were expelled from the old boys’ association. As I have suggested, it is likely that the school was most upset by the breaking of the code of silence, and this by someone who had peremptorily been thrown out, and by the fact that many of the book’s characters were apparently identifiable. There was a belief that the drama was a result of salacious sex, which was palpably not the case. But the fuss apparently led to good sales.
Now its value though is as a historical piece, and as part of the Waugh family jigsaw, even if it is a little boring in places.

[ALEARDO ZANGHELLINI · Rating 2 out of 5]

This gets two stars because the author was very young when he wrote it, so I decided to cut him some slack. But to say that this is a very uneven work doesn't begin to convey everything that's wrong with it.

The book is frequently (read: when the author thought it a good idea to describe in minute detail rugby or cricket matches) mind-bogglingly dull. More often than not (read: when the author recounts, again in minute detail, various 'rags' or pranks that presumably were inspired by real-life occurrences) it is also self-indulgently moronic. These are common weaknesses of public school novels, but The Loom of Youth takes them to a whole new level -- a repeat offender if ever there was one.

Additionally, this recidivism is generally unrelieved by any notably redeeming qualities. Sometimes the story picks up and you feel it may all be going somewhere; sometimes an interesting, though rarely profound, insight flashes through...

But our hopes, it turns out, are awakened in vain. The ending lacks poignancy: the quasi-existentialist conclusion to which Gordon's (the main character's) belated musings lead him is half-baked at best; and his egotism renews itself at every turn (even when he and perhaps the author think he is overcoming it).

Add to this a virtual absence of characterisation, with dozens of students all blending into one; some weird longings/inspirations on Gordon's part (his attraction to Catholicism) that rather come out of the blue; and the author's penchant for undisguised didacticism (about the public school system)... and you may justifiably wonder why the book went through quite so many reprints.

Gordon's (platonic) relationship with Moorcombe (? I forget his name) is symptomatic of the book's weaknesses. As an element in the story it comes across as purely incidental and entirely disposable. There is a complete lack of emotional insight and we learn nothing whatever about Moorcombe as a character.

[Edward Butler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this in conjunction with Hughes' Tom Brown's Schooldays. I highly recommend this, in order to appreciate either novel fully. They are closer parallels than any two novels I've read, and together form a comprehensive investigation of the ideals of the English public school system. These ideals are set forth in Tom Brown, at the beginning of the Victorian era, and are subjected to a thorough critique in The Loom of Youth, at the beginning of World War I, a critique all the more incisive in that Hughes and Waugh share so much common ground. Hughes is not nearly so blind to the flaws in the system, nor Waugh nearly so hostile to that system, as they might superficially appear. This makes the points at which they differ all the more important, because they reveal that element of change which was truly inexorable, that irreducible difference incapable, finally, of being accomodated by Hughes' genial imperial ecumenism, though it stretch however far, despite Waugh's clearly fervent wish for reconciliation.

[David Lowther · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Loom of Youth had its moments but it took at least three-quarters of the narrative to work out what was actually going on in this fictional pre-war public school. Sometimes it was difficult to work out who was a teacher and who was a pupil and the inter mural sports programme was incomprehensible.

It's great strengths were the portrayal of the trials and tribulations of adolescence, the clash between the reactionary and the modern in the school curriculum and the shadow of the First World War which hangs over the final quarter of the novel.

Waugh wrote the book in 1917 and it was controversial at the time of publication, though it's hard to see why.

David Lowther. Author of The Blue Pencil (thebluepencil.co.uk)
and Liberating Belsen (to be published in paperback on May 1st.2015)

[Chris Fellows · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably the best book to read in August 2014, thinking about August 1914 and all those about to be ground into pet mince in the trenches. It is a good eye-opener for people like me who are prone to romanticise the glories of the Edwardian period before Western Civilisation went down the toilet. These boys are just as cynical, self-centred, lazy, and obliviously contemptuous of the civilisation they live in as we were in the dying years of the Cold War.

Alec Waugh wrote it when he was 17, which is why I gave it five stars. Though limping at times, and - as other reviewers have pointed out - containing a relatively high content of blow-by-blow descriptions of cricket and rugby matches, it is a truly amazing production for a 17-year-old author.

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought this would be primarily an interesting period peice, and yet there were still some passages that I found evocative of my own experience of adolescence, even though mine is so removed from the author's! The contraversal passages are really very innocent, but it is easily possible to see why they would have caused a stir at the time, not just because of the mention of homosexuality but because of the damning indictment of the school system - no one cares what you do as long as you don't get caught doing it, at which point they suddenly develop morals!

[Esdaile · Rating 1 out of 5]

Very disappointing. The book caused a scandal, which must have bewildered some thinking people even at the time, because of very fleeting references to what I think is referredto as "silliness". The main interest of the characters in the book and apparently of the author too, is school cricket scores. Only worth reading, in my opinion, if you are making a collection of all school novels that exist.

[Nancy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I spent several weeks reading this book but found myself only 27% through when I decided to bail. The culture of a British public school was interesting but I could never detect a plot.

[David · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really think you had to be there to make much sense of what's going on in this.

[J T · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author was 17 years old when he set down this manuscript and I was just thoroughly entertained.

[John Bohnert · Rating 1 out of 5]

The boys were obsessed with sports.
They neglected their school work and cheated.
All the time spent on British games made this book tough sledding.

[H · Rating 3 out of 5]

In another books a surviving soldier wonders how they came to be in the midst of such horrific slaughter, treatment of the poor vs the toffs etc during WW1.

Its about the English Public School in the years leading up to WWI

This book was controversial in its time for lifting the lid on the bullying, idleness, and homosexuality inherent in the Public School system

The tradition was the backbone of the entire Public School system. Caning, cribbing, fagging, ragging, soft masters and merciless prefects - conformity was king and ability at games the means to a coronation.

Like most of the Public School boys he is an arrogant, egotistical, loathsome craven little toerag adorned in the tinsel of a classical education.

I doubt it's changed much now really, although the homosexuality wouldn't be a big deal now.
The arrogance, bullying and fact that thick rich kids go on to get the important jobs? Yep, still happens.

depressing really. And this was the "great Empire".

[Dale Bay · Rating 5 out of 5]

As for the book itself I have nothing to add to Perry Whitford's detailed review infra.

More generally, this was written around the same time as PG Wodehouse was beginning his writing career. Plum began by writing for his school paper and moved on from there. Given the time and subject readers who are interested in learning more about life in one stratified part of a highly stratified society prior to the Great War are advised to consider reading both author's early works.

That being said, if like me you're unfamiliar with cricket and rugby it's worth your time to watch some "cricket/rugby for Americans" explanations on YouTube. Otherwise you're in for heavy going with either of early Waugh or Wodehouse.

I gave five stars because of the excellence of the writing style and Waugh's ability to successfully portray Gordon's growing self-awareness.

[David Allen White · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think Waugh wrote this for a limited audience. I say this because it is all about an English "public" (i.e. boarding) school, and it is incomprehensible unless one knows the meanings of all the terms that relate both to the method of education and the hierarchy of students and teachers, as well as the athleticism and its progression of various contests and events. A good glossary or footnotes would have helped.

[Winthrop Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

The early promise that was more than fulfilled

Here it is, the England of public schools at its finest right as the war, and all the changes, would arrive. Read the logic as it is argued, term to term, sports versus academics, the politics of rising in a school, turf wars over the school yard, within the school, all to smash.

[Caroline Thomson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yes, in some ways a typical boy's school story...and one with far to much rugger and cricket (not sure what I expected!)...but in other ways it's deeply moving. The fairwell to 'Tester' I found incredibly beautiful and profound, a clear picture of a time of innocence moving bleakly into a time of war . (Thanks Project Gutenberg!)

[Natty S · Rating 3 out of 5]

I suppose even the rich have to indulge in memoir. Does give a good sense of what attending an English boarding school was like, especially just before the Great War (which is really the only part of the book that is all that poignant).

[Peter Shields · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sentimental and very sad.

[Chels S · Rating 4 out of 5]

A damning condemnation of the school system, even if the author himself didn't mean it to be quite such an indictment.

[Holly]

DNF

[Miss Anthrope · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not gonna lie, I read this book because I heard there was gayness. And there is gayness, only it's not much, and you have to wade through most of the novel before you get to it. I think my expectations were too high because I've watched a lot of BL anime...
The chapter helpfully entitled "Romance" is where it happens. But I also got the feeling that Gordon had a crush on his teacher Ferrers... but as I said, I've watched a lot of BL anime so maybe it's just me.
There is so much sport, which I don't understand the rules for, and context-specific language that isn't explained, so an annotated edition would be helpful. But it is amazing to know that this novel was written by a teenager and it's WAY better than anything I could've written as a teenager, so I really respect that.
I recommend watching the film "Another Country" for context, I found it extremely helpful.

[Stevie Turner · Rating 2 out of 5]

Yawn....

[Tim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty good for an 18-year-old. Doing as recommended, writing about what you know. It's not brilliant as literature - Kipling, a fairly close contemporary, was at just a couple of years older writing books that made him one of the few good picks of the Nobel Prize committee, and himself wrote a public-school yarn of real beauty and pathos, Stalky & Co, compared to which this is more like Billy Bunter meets Tom Brown in a tin of spam. Still, it was a hit at the time, and also Alec was Evelyn's older brother, and these things give it a certain extrinsic interest, plus I am for some reason a sucker for school stories - though I skimmed the lengthy descriptions of rugger and cricket matches - and I have to admit I sort of enjoyed it.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit too much emphasis on sports for me, but I suppose that is the authentic portrayal of private school life I was looking for. The scandalous gay scene however left me wanting, scandalous for the time but very subtle and a total tease for the present!