Books (NEW)

Isobel Ross (2024) Boys: The Psychology of Co-ed Boarding in the 1960s, Cheltenham: Goldcrest Books

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.

Available here.

Charles Spencer (2024) A Very Private School, HarperCollins: Glasgow

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.

Available here

Daniel Kupfermann (2023) “Don’t Be So Sensitive!”: Surviving a Broken Boyhood in a Foolish Era

My memoir Don’t Be So Sensitive! explores some dark themes. It was only when I was writing the book that I came to realise – OMG – everyone in my family attended boarding school and they’re all screwed-up!! It was an amazing discovery.

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.

Available here.

Person Irresponsible (2023) Everywhere I NEVER Wanted To Go: but I did anyway

In the latest iteration of her mid-life crisis, Person Irresponsible, England’s most invisible female adventurer, bought a ubiquitous white van, complete with toilet, bed and kitchenette.

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.

Available here.

Martin Flanagan (2023) The Empty Honour Board – a School Memoir, Penguin Books: Melbourne

In 1966, at the age of 10, Martin Flanagan was sent to a Catholic boarding school in north-west Tasmania. Of the 12 priests on the staff, three have since gone to prison for sexual crimes committed against boys in their care. In 2018 and 2019, a series of disclosures about the school appeared on the ABC Tasmania website. Then came the Pell case. What followed was a frenzy of opinions, none of which represented Flanagan’s view.

The Empty Honour Board is part memoir, a reflection on truth and memory, and what is lost in rushing to judgement.


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.

A major reckoning with his past, however, leaves him with his ambition as a writer.

A prison diary, a story of brotherly love, a journey of redemption, Flanagan’s book goes inside an experience many have had, but few have talked about.

Available here.

Penny Cavenagh, Susan McPherson & Jane Ogden, eds (2023) The Psychological Impact of Boarding School – The Trunk in the Hall, Abingdon: Routledge

The Psychological Impact of Boarding School is a collection of research-based essays answering a range of questions about boarding school and its long-term impact.

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.

Available here.

Soosan Latham & Roya Ferdows (2023) Childhood, Identity and Masculinity – The Boarding School Boys, Abingdon: Routledge

Childhood, Identity and Masculinity: The Boarding School Boys examines the lives of ten Iranian men who were sent to boarding schools in England during the 1960s and 1970s.

Their stories, situated at the intersection of Eastern and Western cultural values, signify their passage to manhood, and highlight the meaning of masculinity then and now.

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.

Available here.

See the earlier volume by the same authors: The Boarding School Girls – Developmental and Cultural Narratives.

Andrew Kavchak (2023) Westminster School: Reflections of a Boarder

Andrew Kavchak was 13 when his divorced parents sent him in 1976 from Montreal, Canada, to attend Westminster School. Andrew’s parents expected him to spend his adolescence living at the school and then pursue his education at Oxbridge. Things did not turn out that way.

In this autobiographical account, Andrew describes his experience as a Canadian in an elite boarding school in the heart of 1970’s London, and the long-term impact on his life.

This book is about opposites: belonging and exclusion, success and failure, history and modernity. Above all, it is about a teenager’s reactions to all six. Andrew delves, for example, into the prolonged separation from his parents and the resulting sense of abandonment and alienation. He reflects on the pitfalls of a foreign name, accent, vocabulary and previous education. He also describes how he coped with his circumstances and how this experience affected him for many years.

Anyone interested in “Boarding School Syndrome” will find his insights fascinating.

Available here.

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