Introduction

It has been some years since I left public school now (more than 10, let us say). The memory of that 5 year experience is not now as clear as I would like. And yet I feel that there is value in writing up what I can remember.

In many ways I have benefited from my experience of having been to one of the great English public schools.

Where one went to school still seems to be a matter of “identity” amongst the more pretentious classes of the UK. If I say “I went to Goring” – I can see that many of my interlocutors can place me and it gives them a comfort – “ah, you are an Grovian”. Even to me, hypocritically as it may seem from reading my memoirs, I often feel that stirring of vanity and pride that such an identity statement gives.