So this time it's neither the Guardian nor the FT. The Freakster gets a letter in Prospect, a relentlessly serious news magazine pitched politically between the Spectator and New Statesman and edited by ex-Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger. Not for the first time in the august columns of heavyweight organs, I attempt to untangle the various crises of the 1970s and show that the end of Keynesian social democratic capitalism was not inevitable in 1979 and that Margaret Thatcher could have been avoided.
I only post here about these little excursions of mine into the papers because I assume that there may be some intelligent OBs out there with some vestiges of grey matter still clinging to the old bonce, who don't get their news fill from the Daily Mail and may be interested.
Freaky in Prospect
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rockfreak
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Re: Freaky in Prospect
My second letter in the august (as opposed to August) current affairs monthly Prospect. And guess what? It's about......boarding schools! Responding to a previous month's article about children's literature I point out that the author had failed to note the metaphorical connection to the English boarding school in the two most famous children's books. In Alice, an otherwise sensible, well-adjusted little Victorian girl falls down a rabbit hole and finds herself having to negotiate a nether world of eccentrics, weirdos, sadists, bores, poseurs and authority figures whose personalities have been knocked out of alignment by spending too much time in this strange enclosed world. The perfect analogy of the English boarding school.
Then there is Peter Pan where our hero flies out of the nursery window and gets lost, leaving his grieving mum and the dog behind. He links up with other lost boys but never quite finds his way back and has to battle fearsome authority figures - Captain Hook and the crocodile for instance. He is taken up by the adoring Wendy who appears to be his girlfriend and mother figure - a fantasy common to boarders like me before CH went co-ed, and of course a big problem when you leave and encounter real women. Hopefully less so in today's CH, although posts from those who were around in the era of Cairncross and Sillett when sex abuse was taking place seem to have been getting very mixed messages about relationships. It's worth noting that both Lewis Carroll and JM Barrie were ex-boarders.
My point to Prospect was that the the writer had perhaps not been to boarding school otherwise she'd have clocked the heavy hand of boarding culture which has lain so oddly across our national life and resulted in our fascination with such bizarre characters as Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg. We can't get enough of them.
Then there is Peter Pan where our hero flies out of the nursery window and gets lost, leaving his grieving mum and the dog behind. He links up with other lost boys but never quite finds his way back and has to battle fearsome authority figures - Captain Hook and the crocodile for instance. He is taken up by the adoring Wendy who appears to be his girlfriend and mother figure - a fantasy common to boarders like me before CH went co-ed, and of course a big problem when you leave and encounter real women. Hopefully less so in today's CH, although posts from those who were around in the era of Cairncross and Sillett when sex abuse was taking place seem to have been getting very mixed messages about relationships. It's worth noting that both Lewis Carroll and JM Barrie were ex-boarders.
My point to Prospect was that the the writer had perhaps not been to boarding school otherwise she'd have clocked the heavy hand of boarding culture which has lain so oddly across our national life and resulted in our fascination with such bizarre characters as Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg. We can't get enough of them.