Description

THE #1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

‘Shocking and moving’ Guardian

‘A tour-de-force’ Washington Post

At eight years of age, Charles Spencer was sent away to one of England’s most exclusive boarding schools.

In this courageous and beautifully written memoir, Spencer offers a clear-eyed, first-hand account of the strange secrets of the school, and the culture of cruelty and abuse he witnessed and experienced in his five years there as a pupil.

Drawing on the memories of many of his schoolboy contemporaries, as well as his own letters and diaries from the time, the book is his attempt to come to terms with the deep emotional scars inflicted upon him. Spencer reflects on the misery, hopelessness and abandonment he felt aged eight, viscerally describing the intense pain of homesickness, the vicious brutality of a boys’ school in the 1970s and the appalling inescapability of it all.

The book cracks the code of the unpoliced regime that ran the place and provides important insights into an antiquated boarding school system. He gives vivid portraits of the teachers and other staff placed in loco parentis, their casual cruelties and toxic obsessions. All these years later, Spencer’s bafflement at their motivations to inflict such cruelty on young children is palpable. As is his fury that, even if somehow he had spoken up, he’d never have been believed.

Charles Spencer’s book ‘A Very Private School’ was a Sunday Times bestseller w/c 11-03-2024.

Publisher Review

EARLY PRAISE FOR A VERY PRIVATE SCHOOL

‘Moving and beautifully written, what Spencer’s courageous book reveals will be horribly familiar to the thousands of us who endured the same vile abuse in dozens of schools that were clones of each other. Most of us will go to our graves with the wounds unhealed’

Louis de Bernieres

‘This is a powerful, unforgettable story of childhood trauma, and the dark secrets and savagery of the past, told with a searing honesty and clarity that is ultimately redemptive’

Justine Picardie

‘A detailed piece of modern history, A Very Private School chronicles the damage done to its author and many of his contemporaries in what John Le Carre called our ‘disgraceful’ private boarding system. It is a vivid, and enraging narrative of systemic brutality down the years, tolerated in silence, unprosecuted, whose consequences affect all our lives’

James Fox

PRAISE FOR THE SHIP

A SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

‘Spencer is one of the finest narrative historians around’

Mail on Sunday

‘Charles Spencer is a gifted storyteller’

The Times

‘As colourful and racy narrative history goes, this absolutely gallops’ Daily Mail

‘As gripping as any thriller. History doesn’t get any better than this’ Bill Bryson

‘A master storyteller … rooted in excellent historical research … a lyrical, vivid and compelling portrait. He succeeds in bringing to life huge characters from nearly a millennium ago’

Spectator