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Deep End, The by Robert Liddell
(A British boarding school for boys, from a teacher's point of view. He is Kit Henderson, a substitute getting some experience before going on to university. The novel makes the point that life in a public school, as these elite establishments are called, is as much a rat race for the masters as for their charges)
Paperback
First published January 1, 1993
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About the author
Robert Liddell
65 books3 followersEnglish literary critic, biographer, novelist, travel writer and poet.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
November 25, 2024
As usual, Liddell's writing is brilliant. The plot has a predictable end, but is still poignant, consistent with the nature of a small, private(public) elementary boarding school in England in the era.
The characterizations are brutally pointed; could characters be so subtle but obvious at the same time? Sly comments sometimes have a rapier edge that leaves others bloody, but unawares. The frank conversation between nephew, aunt and uncle surprised me; I expected them to ignore characteristics of individuals when they were sexual or deviant, but they did not.
The character of Dudley Knight should rank with some famous characters of Dickens as representative of a type. He is indeed a nasty character: duplicitous, sanctimonious and, while sly, essentially stupid.
Having read this, one would probably not send a child to a boarding school.
As with LIddell’s other books, I certainly recommend this one.
The characterizations are brutally pointed; could characters be so subtle but obvious at the same time? Sly comments sometimes have a rapier edge that leaves others bloody, but unawares. The frank conversation between nephew, aunt and uncle surprised me; I expected them to ignore characteristics of individuals when they were sexual or deviant, but they did not.
The character of Dudley Knight should rank with some famous characters of Dickens as representative of a type. He is indeed a nasty character: duplicitous, sanctimonious and, while sly, essentially stupid.
Having read this, one would probably not send a child to a boarding school.
As with LIddell’s other books, I certainly recommend this one.
August 6, 2025
"Set in a preparatory school a few years after the end of the first world war, 'The Deep End' is a brilliant tragi-comedy of children at the tender mercies of adults.
"There are two main themes: that of an old-fashioned headmaster whose repellent clerical colleague, The Rev. Dudley Knight, wishes to force him into retirement and to impose his own unwholesome and hearty ethos upon the school: and that of Harry Staples a timid child, tormented by authority and by the other boys, particularly on account of his morbid fear of the swimming bath. The two storiesare skilfully interwoven, and the final tragedy of Harry provides the Rev. Dudley Knight with a grim opportunity to implement his schemes. The book ends (as such stories often end in life) with the triumph of the wicked-though it it is not allowed, in this case, to be seen as a moral victory.
"Much of this taut, touching and sharp-pointed tale is told in is told in dialogue-it is not for nothing that Mr. Liddell has written a critical appreciation of 'The Novels of Ivy Compton-Burnett'-and the book provides an entertainment that is at once gripping, astringent, and very funny." From the flyleaf of the original 1968 hardback edition of this novel published by Longmans.
The following is from Publishers Weekly in 1993 when the novel was published in the USA:
"Arriving here 25 years after its British publication, Liddell's very English tale of interwar boarding-school beastliness opens creakily, in an old-fashioned salvo of drawing-room banter. Its well-mannered craftsmanship, however, even as it comes to exert a gradual attraction, increasingly proves--like the veneer of decorum in the school halls--only a mask for a darker and less wholesome narrative. Arriving as a substitute teacher at his aging uncle's prep school, Cambridge-bound Kit Henderson finds himself drawn inexorably into increasingly open conflict with deputy head Dudley Knight and his disingenuous, muscular brand of Christianity. The fatal focus of their struggle is Harry Staples, whose combination of intellectual precocity and physical vulnerability threatens Knight even as it endears him to Kit, and whose fear of swimming the latter makes it a point of honor to combat. Liddell adeptly portrays the easy savagery of the young; yet the true serpents in his garden are the staff, locked in internecine rivalries, careless of their charges' good and ``the ways in which we corrupt their innocence.'' Liddell is a subtle corrupter himself: the understated currents of frustrated sexuality, class resentment and emotional repression circulating here do just as insidious a job of warping the novel's genteel surface."
I have included both the original UK publisher's synopsis and the American Publisher Weekly one because while both are true neither really does more than scratch the surface of what this novel is about. 'The Deep End' is about so much more than what happens in it. It is a coruscating attack on the mendacity, deceit and betrayal of almost every aspect of middle class English life, its educational, social, moral, philosophical systems of belief, everything that placed English men, women, institutions and values on a pedestal to be admired and held up as exemplars. All are not only ridiculed but portrayed as cant. There is no right or wrong or good and bad. There are only appalling people making revoltingly selfish and opportunistic decisions based on nothing but what will secure or promote their financial well being. Although not recognised as such this is a wonderful state of the nation novel and the Rev. Dudley Knight is a match for Archie Rice in 'The Entertainer' by John Osborne. The great difference is that in 'The Deep End' Dudley Knight enjoys a triumph such as Archie Rice could only dream of.
This is very much a novel which uses a boarding school as a substitute for, or microcosm of, English life. As such it concentrates narrowly on middle class characters and it is redundant to complain about this or point out the narrowness of the perspective. The fact is that when this novel was published in 1968, and probably for another decade or so, the English preparatory and public schools (see my footnote *1 below) were seen not as the expensive finishing schools of the off spring of international billionaire criminal oligarchs and their English enablers, but the training schools for Englands rulers and the purveyors of values and traditions that were as unchanging and eternal as those of the catholic church.
Of course this was all total bollocks, the English preparatory and public schools were as rotten to the core as the catholic church (though surprisingly it would take another thirty years before the myths of the catholic church were exposed) and as free of anything but cant and hypocrisy. Robert Liddell has written a passionately angry and denunciatory novel which is, in my estimation, far more devastating than the film 'If' by Lindsay Anderson (which came out in 1968 as well). You have to know your enemy intimately to write a novel destroying them in such a wonderfully concise way (it is only 180+ pages). Liddell's hatred and scorn for just about every shibboleth and sacred cow that he was brought up to believe in and admire is so powerful because it is so restrained. The Rev. Dudley Knight is an awful man, a wicked man, a man of complete nullity when it comes to morals, beliefs or intelligence. He is the proverbial snake in the garden, the barbarian at the gate, but he has not entered the garden by stealth or by knocking down the gates. He has been invited in and welcomed, a place laid at the table for him and power handed over to him with full knowledge of his inadequacies. That it is children that are being handed into this monsters care makes the civilised behavior of those who co-operate so much more devastating.
There are sins of Commission and Omission; those of Commission are gaudy bright baubles no one can miss, those of Omission are the ones that enable those of Commission to take place. Von Papen walked free from Nuremberg an innocent man but he was as much responsible for the crimes of the Nazis as the men who carried them out. He gave the Nazis power. In 'The Deep End' it is the perfectly civilised and admirable Richard Henderson who plays von Papern to Dudley Knights Hitler manque. An extreme reading, even a forced reading? Maybe a little, but betrayal, or at least failure to do what is right, is limitless in its consequence.
This is a brilliant novel and Robert Liddell is one of the great forgotten English 20th century authors. He is always being rediscovered and then forgotten again. Discovering him was for me one of the great treats of 2024. I would love to think I will convince one person to seek out and read his extraordinary novels and if I do then I have done something good.
*1 in England preparatory schools and public schools were private boarding schools. Preparatory schools prepared boys (in the period of the novel) between 8-13 (roughly primary and junior high years) to gain access to 'Public' schools. Preparatory schools were 'private' businesses owned and run the headmaster. Public schools were private but were not businesses but 'charitable' foundations for boys 13/14 to 18 (roughly junior, sophomore and senior years in high school). The American private/preparatory schools are related to but very different to English ones.
"There are two main themes: that of an old-fashioned headmaster whose repellent clerical colleague, The Rev. Dudley Knight, wishes to force him into retirement and to impose his own unwholesome and hearty ethos upon the school: and that of Harry Staples a timid child, tormented by authority and by the other boys, particularly on account of his morbid fear of the swimming bath. The two storiesare skilfully interwoven, and the final tragedy of Harry provides the Rev. Dudley Knight with a grim opportunity to implement his schemes. The book ends (as such stories often end in life) with the triumph of the wicked-though it it is not allowed, in this case, to be seen as a moral victory.
"Much of this taut, touching and sharp-pointed tale is told in is told in dialogue-it is not for nothing that Mr. Liddell has written a critical appreciation of 'The Novels of Ivy Compton-Burnett'-and the book provides an entertainment that is at once gripping, astringent, and very funny." From the flyleaf of the original 1968 hardback edition of this novel published by Longmans.
The following is from Publishers Weekly in 1993 when the novel was published in the USA:
"Arriving here 25 years after its British publication, Liddell's very English tale of interwar boarding-school beastliness opens creakily, in an old-fashioned salvo of drawing-room banter. Its well-mannered craftsmanship, however, even as it comes to exert a gradual attraction, increasingly proves--like the veneer of decorum in the school halls--only a mask for a darker and less wholesome narrative. Arriving as a substitute teacher at his aging uncle's prep school, Cambridge-bound Kit Henderson finds himself drawn inexorably into increasingly open conflict with deputy head Dudley Knight and his disingenuous, muscular brand of Christianity. The fatal focus of their struggle is Harry Staples, whose combination of intellectual precocity and physical vulnerability threatens Knight even as it endears him to Kit, and whose fear of swimming the latter makes it a point of honor to combat. Liddell adeptly portrays the easy savagery of the young; yet the true serpents in his garden are the staff, locked in internecine rivalries, careless of their charges' good and ``the ways in which we corrupt their innocence.'' Liddell is a subtle corrupter himself: the understated currents of frustrated sexuality, class resentment and emotional repression circulating here do just as insidious a job of warping the novel's genteel surface."
I have included both the original UK publisher's synopsis and the American Publisher Weekly one because while both are true neither really does more than scratch the surface of what this novel is about. 'The Deep End' is about so much more than what happens in it. It is a coruscating attack on the mendacity, deceit and betrayal of almost every aspect of middle class English life, its educational, social, moral, philosophical systems of belief, everything that placed English men, women, institutions and values on a pedestal to be admired and held up as exemplars. All are not only ridiculed but portrayed as cant. There is no right or wrong or good and bad. There are only appalling people making revoltingly selfish and opportunistic decisions based on nothing but what will secure or promote their financial well being. Although not recognised as such this is a wonderful state of the nation novel and the Rev. Dudley Knight is a match for Archie Rice in 'The Entertainer' by John Osborne. The great difference is that in 'The Deep End' Dudley Knight enjoys a triumph such as Archie Rice could only dream of.
This is very much a novel which uses a boarding school as a substitute for, or microcosm of, English life. As such it concentrates narrowly on middle class characters and it is redundant to complain about this or point out the narrowness of the perspective. The fact is that when this novel was published in 1968, and probably for another decade or so, the English preparatory and public schools (see my footnote *1 below) were seen not as the expensive finishing schools of the off spring of international billionaire criminal oligarchs and their English enablers, but the training schools for Englands rulers and the purveyors of values and traditions that were as unchanging and eternal as those of the catholic church.
Of course this was all total bollocks, the English preparatory and public schools were as rotten to the core as the catholic church (though surprisingly it would take another thirty years before the myths of the catholic church were exposed) and as free of anything but cant and hypocrisy. Robert Liddell has written a passionately angry and denunciatory novel which is, in my estimation, far more devastating than the film 'If' by Lindsay Anderson (which came out in 1968 as well). You have to know your enemy intimately to write a novel destroying them in such a wonderfully concise way (it is only 180+ pages). Liddell's hatred and scorn for just about every shibboleth and sacred cow that he was brought up to believe in and admire is so powerful because it is so restrained. The Rev. Dudley Knight is an awful man, a wicked man, a man of complete nullity when it comes to morals, beliefs or intelligence. He is the proverbial snake in the garden, the barbarian at the gate, but he has not entered the garden by stealth or by knocking down the gates. He has been invited in and welcomed, a place laid at the table for him and power handed over to him with full knowledge of his inadequacies. That it is children that are being handed into this monsters care makes the civilised behavior of those who co-operate so much more devastating.
There are sins of Commission and Omission; those of Commission are gaudy bright baubles no one can miss, those of Omission are the ones that enable those of Commission to take place. Von Papen walked free from Nuremberg an innocent man but he was as much responsible for the crimes of the Nazis as the men who carried them out. He gave the Nazis power. In 'The Deep End' it is the perfectly civilised and admirable Richard Henderson who plays von Papern to Dudley Knights Hitler manque. An extreme reading, even a forced reading? Maybe a little, but betrayal, or at least failure to do what is right, is limitless in its consequence.
This is a brilliant novel and Robert Liddell is one of the great forgotten English 20th century authors. He is always being rediscovered and then forgotten again. Discovering him was for me one of the great treats of 2024. I would love to think I will convince one person to seek out and read his extraordinary novels and if I do then I have done something good.
*1 in England preparatory schools and public schools were private boarding schools. Preparatory schools prepared boys (in the period of the novel) between 8-13 (roughly primary and junior high years) to gain access to 'Public' schools. Preparatory schools were 'private' businesses owned and run the headmaster. Public schools were private but were not businesses but 'charitable' foundations for boys 13/14 to 18 (roughly junior, sophomore and senior years in high school). The American private/preparatory schools are related to but very different to English ones.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews