Books (NEW)

Former boarders often lead successful lives, but become increasingly conscious that something in them is incomplete. An event, such as a broken relationship or their own children starting school, can trigger a powerful response of distress and confusion, even to the point of breakdown and collapse. Only by seeking professional help and by their own hard work do they come to understand what has happened to them – that it is not their fault; that they can grow and learn from the experience; and that they can see themselves and those they love in a new and kinder light. Creativity can play a large part in this process, be it in the visual arts, drama, writing or, as in this book, poetry. The editors, two of whom are former boarders, all have worked as part of Boarding School Concern and its predecessors to help former boarders come to terms with their situation.

Boarding school in the 1970s was a world of dormitory games, hidden contraband, and secret friends. It is also the story of their resultant punishments, school rituals and many small humiliations. While many have begun to write from the perspective of both examining the system and relating experience, this story also leads up to the drama of being expelled aged ten, the impact of the theatrical way this was handled, and learning to live with that experience in adult life. After decades of sharing outrageous episodes of pint-sized rebellion, I gradually re-framed the stories with new understanding both through a long career in teaching and raising two children myself. It begins with returning to the school (now long since reclaimed as a country house) 30 years later, with my husband and children, which turned out to be the beginning of new understanding of the impact of school culture on a child.

Dick Whippington is nearly fourteen and about to go to his ‘Public School’, Beaton College. He is told it will be ‘The Making of Him’, but he is anxious about what that means. He has just left his ‘Preparatory School’, Conformingham Academy for the sons of Gentlemen after boarding from the age of eight. He feels like an orphanage misfit, an oddity, and wonders if he’s possibly an alien. What else could account for him being so different? Dick is at the start of the trials and tribulations of adolescence. He lives with his family but feels unheard, unacknowledged and largely unwanted as his mother constantly bosses him, dominates him, tells him what to think, what he should feel and the many ‘correct’ things he should say. He gets so much criticism if he dares to say anything he actually feels, it seems as if there is no room for him, only for a performance of him.

He wrote the book in the Louvre between 2019 and 2024 after leaving his university post. “It’s time to take stock,” he explains at the start. “I’m doing this not just by discovering Paris but also through oil painting and constructing a memoir of childhood entrapment and adult freedom.”

The two clear gains from those schooldays were his discovery of painting and his desire to be elsewhere.

Sad Little Men author Richard Beard writes that Cologne-Brookes’s “visual artist’s eye for detail evokes a distant past in all its absurdity and eccentricity” and calls the book an “uplifting account of a life in search of liberty.”

Novelist Mimi Thebo writes that “the brutality of school opens the reader’s heart (and eyes) to the brutality that lies behind so much of the art.”

Featuring the experience and insights of some 16 different clinicians, many of whom are ex-boarders themselves, this new collection offers contributions from a wide range of theoretical backgrounds, including psychodynamic, Jungian, transactional analysis and ‘energy psychology’. It tells how the understanding of the ‘boarding school syndrome’ has been enlarged by recent advances in attachment therapy, trauma studies, neuroscience, including pastoral, and safeguarding awareness within education. Topics covered include the effects of boarding on girls, on both intimate and sibling relationships, on military family boarders and on ex-boarder therapists, as well as how both careful, patient attention and dynamic EMDR may be used to alleviate boarding school trauma.

The stereotype of expatriate families is of glamorous lives lived in exotic locations with access to wealth and privilege. However, many of these families feel pressure to send their children ‘home’ to boarding school in their passport country without understanding the long-term implications of this choice. This book explores such long term effects, starting with laying an accessible theoretical framework for the reader by drawing on scholarship from the fields of psychology, the study of TCKs, and the growing understanding of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). The text then moves into the personal testimonies of 16 individuals, most of whom are TCKs or cross-cultural boarders, shedding light on the particular challenges they’ve faced. The book ends by offering hope and help with chapters providing insights and practical strategies for supporting those affected by boarding school.

The book is presented in five parts. The first details the start of William’s psychotherapy. Part II takes us back to William’s childhood, a time of traumatic experiences, culminating in him being sent away from England to a Catholic boarding school in Ireland where a priest exploits his vulnerability. Part III continues his life story past school to a life dominated by work and heavy drinking, and marked by his first suicide attempt. His fortunes change when he meets Meg and finds some stability. Years later, when his youngest child leaves home and he has time on his hands, his suicidal feelings return. It is at this point he starts psychotherapy. The penultimate part focuses on William’s creativity and his innovative illustrated timeline of his life. This creative project is a key part of his recovery. Once that is completed, his psychotherapy starts to come to an end, which is the final part of the book.

Growing up surrounded by luxury, prestige, and societal expectations, the author reveals the emotional scars left by psychological abuse, neglect, and a family life built on secrets. Behind the polished facade of riches lies a reality of trauma, heartbreak, and the pursuit of healing.

This deeply personal narrative shares the often unseen struggles of growing up in a world where perfection is expected, but emotional survival becomes the true challenge. Surviving Privilege explores the complicated dynamics of wealthy families, the toll of boarding school life, and the journey to overcome childhood trauma and psychological abuse.

Join the author as she navigates the pain of her past, learns to confront her fears, and ultimately finds a path to emotional healing and resilience.

Isobel Ross was a pupil at a co-educational boarding school in Scotland from 1965 to 1971. Unique about this school was that boy boarders far outnumbered girl boarders, and, by the late 1960s, the adults in charge had become confused about their duty of care.

Words from Isobel’s adolescent diaries, anxious but perceptive, and her current voice, based on over thirty years as an educational psychologist, combine in this narrative to create a unique psychological perspective.

In this poignant memoir, Charles Spencer recounts the trauma of being sent away from home at age eight to attend a boarding school.

A Very Private School offers a clear-eyed, firsthand account of a culture of cruelty at the school Spencer attended in his youth and provides important insights into an antiquated boarding system. Drawing on the memories of many of his schoolboy contemporaries, as well as his own letters and diaries from the time, he reflects on the hopelessness and abandonment he felt aged eight, viscerally describing the intense pain of homesickness and the appalling inescapability of it all. Exploring the long-lasting impact of his experiences, Spencer presents a candid reckoning with his past and a reclamation of his childhood.

Almost everyone in my family went to boarding school. My mother boarded from the age of 8. She was bullied badly and developed a drink problem in adulthood.

My stepfather also went to boarding school from a similar age. He was also bullied and became very embittered and angry. Ironically, he never ceased wanting the same for me – probably to get me out of the house!

My two half-brothers also boarded from the age of about 9. Both became alcoholics.

I thought I’d escaped boarding school because I attended private schools as a day boy. But in a way I was wrong. My memoir explores the subtle ways the boarding school experience affected my mother’s psychology, paving the way for my annual seasonal abandonment.

She only added a cat litter tray. Her mission: to fathom why people believed England was going down the toilet.

Unexpectedly, she discovered quite a bit about the culture she is said to hail from. Having been trapped in boarding school from a young age and force-fed history lessons on men doing unspeakable things to one another, she came out the other side quite deranged.

Where was her England? Who were her icons? What mysterious forces had shaped her behaviour? Where was she really from? Where was herstory?

Everywhere I NEVER Wanted To Go tells the story of one woman’s year-long journey in a van exploring every county but the London boroughs – all the while recollecting a childhood best forgotten.

Flanagan’s school abounds in memorable characters. There’s a kid who escapes and gets as far as Surfers Paradise, and two boys who hold a competition during evening chapel to see who can confess more times. A wild boy receives a ‘Bradmanesque’ 234 strokes of the cane in one year.

It is a lonely and, at times, scary existence – as while the boys are victims of violence, they are also perpetrators. Drawn to neither the school nor its religion, Flanagan discovers himself through sport, later becoming known as one of Australia’s most creative sportswriters.

But his boarding days linger. In his first three years at the school, he’d faced a series of adult moral challenges. Not being an adult, he had failed – in his own estimation. This becomes of great consequence in his 20s when his wife is about to have their first child.

Through a combination of original in-depth first-person narratives as well as larger scale surveys, this book aims to fill gaps in current boarding school research and present new findings. Topics addressed include gender differences, eating behaviour, loneliness, mental health and relationships, the differences between younger and older boarders, and ex-boarder experiences of therapy.

The research results highlight a key role in the age that children start boarding, the way that long-term psychological influences of friendships formed at school, and the larger role that parent and family relationships play in the psychological lives of boarders. Through these findings, the book ultimately challenges the current understanding of  ‘boarding school syndrome’, proposing a move beyond the term and its concept.

The reflective narratives explore issues of physical and emotional abuse received from administrators and peers, as well as the ‘man up’ motto that pressurised them to persevere in the spirit of meeting expectations and becoming a man.

Narrated within the context of the traditional role of men in both Iranian and British societies, the book highlights key themes of trauma, survival and resistance, power and privilege, and their impact on the men over their lifespan. The volume offers rich insight into understanding the developmental challenges that adolescent boys face as they attempt to deal with the trauma of separation from their parents, while conforming to strict rules and regulations of boarding school education, and societal expectations of them.