This is a satire/ parody/ spoof/ mockery of ‘Public School’ education (i.e. Expensive elite private boarding school) of the British “elite” and the attitudes of “elite” families.
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.
Available here.