'A brave and necessary book' GUARDIAN
'Shocking, gripping and sobering' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
This is the story of generations of parents, Britain's richest and grandest, who believed that being miserable at school was necessary to make a good and successful citizen. Childish suffering was a price they accepted for the preservation of their class, and their entitlement. The children who were moulded by this misery and abuse went on - as they still do - to run Britain's public institutions and private companies.Confronting the truth of his own schooldays and the crimes he witnessed, Alex Renton has revealed a much bigger story. It is of a profound malaise in the British elite, shown up by tolerance of the abuse of its own children that amounts to collusion. This culture and its traditions, and the hypocrisy, cronyism and conspiracy that underpin them, are key to any explanation of the scandals over sexual abuse, violence and cover-up in child care institutions that are now shocking the nation.
As Renton shows, complicity in this is the bleak secret at the heart of today's British elite.
- ISBN10 1474600549
- ISBN13 9781474600545
- Publish Date 6 April 2017
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 5 March 2021
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Orion Publishing Co
- Imprint Weidenfeld & Nicolson
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 416
- Language English