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A Very Private School: A Memoir Hardcover – March 12, 2024

by Charles Spencer (Author)

4.5 934 ratings

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“A tour de force.” —The Washington Post

In this poignant memoir, Charles Spencer recounts the trauma of being sent away from home at age eight to attend boarding school.

A Very Private School offers a clear-eyed, first-hand account of a culture of cruelty at the school Charles 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 at 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.

Print length

304 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Gallery Books
Publication date

March 12, 2024
Dimensions

6 x 1 x 9 inches
ISBN-10

1668046385
ISBN-13

978-1668046388
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From the Publisher

Editorial Reviews

Review

“A tour de force.”
—Washington Post

“[Spencer] writes here with commanding fluency, evoking every last squeaky floorboard and V-neck sweater in forensic detail.”
—Air Mail

"One of the best non-fiction books to read in 2024."
—The Daily Mail

"A Very Private School is not a roll-call of
random cruelties but a complete and utterly dismal picture of institutionalised horror."
—The New Stateseman

"[Spencer's] story is compelling and deeply disturbing. It is also beautifully written. Despite navigating deep and troubled waters, [his] prose is deft and lively. It is never melodramatic or overblown, even in the book’s darkest moments.."
—The Post and Courier

“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 Carré called our ‘disgraceful’ private boarding system. It is a vivid and enraging narrative of systemic brutality tolerated in silence, unprosecuted, whose consequences affect all our lives.”
—James Fox, New York Times bestselling co-author of Life

“This compelling, insightful, and heartbreaking book is an important boarding school case study. A moving must-read for all parents considering sending their children away for their education.”
—Philippa Perry, internationally bestselling author of The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read

"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 Bernières, Sunday Times bestselling author of Captain Corelli's Mandolin

"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, internationally bestselling author of Coco Chanel: The Legend and the Life

About the Author

Charles Spencer is the author of seven history books, including Sunday Times (London) bestsellers The White Ship: Conquest, Anarchy and the Wrecking of Henry I’s Dream, Blenheim: Battle for Europe (shortlisted for History Book of the Year, UK National Book Awards), and Killers of the King: The Men Who Dared to Execute Charles I. To Catch a King: Charles II’s Great Escape was a Times (London) bestseller in 2017 and 2018. He also cohosts The Rabbit Hole Detectives podcast and has presented historical documentaries for television. He was awarded an MA in modern history from Magdalen College, Oxford University, before going on to work for the NBC News for a decade, as an on-air reporter for Today, and a presenter for the History Channel.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Gallery Books (March 12, 2024)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 304 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1668046385
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1668046388
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.04 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #31,896 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #23 in Royalty Biographies
- #134 in Rich & Famous Biographies
- #1,178 in Memoirs (Books)

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4.5 934 ratings

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Charles Spencer

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Charles Spencer is an author, historian, public speaker, broadcaster and journalist. He is also the 9th Earl Spencer.

Charles Spencer is the author of seven non-fiction books, including three Sunday Times bestsellers: Blenheim, Battle for Europe, which was shortlisted for Historical Book of the Year at the 2005 National Book Awards; Killers of the King – which was the second highest selling History book in the UK in 2014; and The White Ship, the No. 1 bestseller on Amazon.

He has been the keynote speaker at hundreds of events in the UK, India, USA, South Africa, France, Australia, Canada, Spain, Portugal and New Zealand.

As a broadcaster, Charles Spencer worked for NBC News as an on-air correspondent from 1986 to 1995. He has been a reporter for Granada Television, has presented for the History Channel, and has appeared on many occasions as an expert on the BBC.

As a print journalist he has written in the UK for The Guardian, The Independent on Sunday, The Financial Times, The Daily Telegraph, and others. In the United States he has written for Vanity Fair, Veranda, and Nest magazines.

Charles Spencer was educated at Eton, and at Oxford University, where he earned his MA in Modern History.

Most recently, Charles Spencer has enjoyed success with ‘The Rabbit Hole Detectives’, – his new podcast presented alongside Dr Cat Jarman, and the Rev. Richard Coles – which takes listeners on a fascinating dive into the origins of real and symbolic historical objects.

You can learn more about Charles Spencer’s family seat at Althorp, via Spencer1508.com, an online platform which shines a light on the 500 year old story of the Estate, and the Spencer Family.

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-rabbit-hole-detectives/id1671879772

https://spencer1508.com/

Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5

934 global ratings

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Customers find the book very poignant and honest, with a great reading experience. They also describe the content as accurate and appalling.

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Emotional tone Writing style Reading experience Content Research quality

22 customers mention "Emotional tone"19 positive3 negative

Customers find the emotional tone poignant, skillful, riveting, shocking, brave, and moving. They also mention the author is insightful and includes some fond memory details relating to his sister Diana Princess of.

"...I could not put it down. He is a marvelous writer and depicts all of the emotions of that 7 year old boy being sent away and what happened there...." Read more

"...Charles Spencer's book does an excellent overview of capturing life at a British boarding school...." Read more

"...The author also includes some fond memory details relating to his sister Diana Princess of Wales and far from being for the faint of heart..." Read more

"Informative and insightful testimony without a lot of complaining...." Read more

21 customers mention "Writing style"18 positive3 negative

Customers find the writing style very well written and articulate. They also say the book is beautifully written.

"This was an excellent book. I could not put it down. He is a marvelous writer and depicts all of the emotions of that 7 year old boy being sent..." Read more

"...His writing is almost lyrical in its tone and content, clearly reflecting his experience with writing, but he captures the voice of a child as well...." Read more

"...the seventies, a very good read, unputdownable book, at times a very hard read, one experiences the suffering the very young pupils suffered at the..." Read more

"...This book was very well written. I recommend it to anyone." Read more

14 customers mention "Reading experience"14 positive0 negative

Customers find the book a great, well-done read. They also say it's an unputdownable book, though at times it'll be hard to read.

"Very brave book . You can physically feel his pain. Thank you for opening our eyes. I have heard of such abuse from...." Read more

"This was an excellent book. I could not put it down...." Read more

"Fantastic work. Has throughly disabused me of lifelong romantic notions about boarding schools. I am so grateful for Spencer’s bravery and strength." Read more

"...toil of the British boarding school life during the seventies, a very good read, unputdownable book, at times a very hard read, one experiences the..." Read more

3 customers mention "Content"3 positive0 negative

Customers find the content honest and accurate. They also say it's an appalling but accurate account of what happened in many UK boarding schools.

"...has written, and I was pleased to discover that he’s such an unflinchingly honest, insightful observer, with a gift for turns of phrase and..." Read more

"...It’s well written and a very poignant and honest read into Earl Spencer’s formative years at a boarding school...." Read more

"An appalling, but accurate account of what happened in many UK boarding schools...." Read more

3 customers mention "Research quality"3 positive0 negative

Customers find the book well-researched and thorough. They also say the details allow them to feel the angst of the protagonist.

"...Charles wrote it from a journalistic perspective with well researched and thorough detail, where you could feel his angst on every page...." Read more

"Informative and insightful testimony without a lot of complaining...." Read more

"What a Brave and Important Book..." Read more

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LOUISE HAYTER

Shocking , brilliantly written

Reviewed in the United States on July 12, 2024

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Very brave book . You can physically feel his pain. Thank you for opening our eyes. I have heard of such abuse from. Pupils at that time at other private school

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William Perham

Valid for All prep schools! Well written.

Reviewed in the United States on May 20, 2024

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Like Spencer, I was sent to a Boarding Prep School in the immediate post WW2 era (in New Zealand). Bullying of all kinds was the accepted culture. Sexual harassment was rife by both senior boys and house masters. Complaints (even to parents) were usually ignored or treated as though they were expected (because it happened to them too?). The story takes too long to get to why, I thought, it was written. But its a story that isn't just about the British aristocratic cohort, it was also true for 'the colonies'. The sense of entitlement (and a mindset of 'slavery') is deep seated. Spencer's book helps to shine a valuable light.

11 people found this helpful

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Peter Clothier

The pain and anger of a boarding school survivor

Reviewed in the United States on March 26, 2024

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This was a hard book to read. The friend who thought to bring it to my attention clearly knew of my history as a boys’ boarding school survivor. I have written about that experience more than once and in various venues—most recently in my book “Dear Harry: Letters to My Father.” Even as I approach my 88th birthday, reading Charles Spencer’s “A Very Private School” brought up all the pain and anger that still pervade me, body and soul, some eight decades later. Such deep and lasting wounds are never fully healed.

Hard to read and hard to talk about because there are many hurdles overcome, all having to do with shame. There is, first, the terrible shame of wealth and privilege—in Spencer’s case far greater wealth and privilege than I have had to deal with. He was the man, you’ll recall, who gave the British royal family a very public scolding at the state funeral of his sister, Diana. What gives me the right to suffer from nothing more than a highly privileged education, the thought goes, when millions throughout the world have far greater cause of suffering in the grim reality of their daily lives? Besides, the very point of the boarding school was—still is, for all I know—to rear the next generation of English gentlemen. (Girls, too, were sent off to school; did they suffer the same physical and sexual abuse? My own sister, Flora, certainly brought away wounds that she spent much of her later life addressing).

The English gentleman, of course, is best known for his stiff upper lip. He is taught—no, programmed—from the age of seven or eight to never complain, to never show signs of emotional distress. If the upper lip begins to tremble, he learns to stiffen it before the tears come--or it will be the worse for him. He learns to harden the armor that protects the most vulnerable parts of him: his feelings. In adult years that armor can prove fatal to relationships, to marriages, to his chosen avocation, to his children. He cannot allow himself feel; besides, he doesn’t know how. He has no right to complain, let alone seek help from anything so threatening as a therapist. He has learned that it’s his duty to control every situation, including, most harmfully, himself.

So the shame and pain and anger came back in force as I read this book. It was unbelievable to me that a school such as Spencer describes could still exist in Britain in the 1970s, four decades after my own. The “prep” and “public school” system has been forced by cultural circumstance to make significant changes in the intervening years. Not least, it is widely co-educational—a humanizing factor. The abominable sadism and the rampant physical and sexual abuse that Spencer experienced could not continue to survive in a world where silence about such things is no longer possible—the kind of silence that, as Spencer points out, all parties, children and adults, conspired to observe; a kind of private school omerta.

In my own school days back in the 1940s I was thankfully not subjected to quite the horrors Spencer experienced in the “prep” school he was sent to in preparation for his years at Eton, the most privileged of all privileged schools. Like him, I was beaten—though never so persistently and with such sadistic cruelly as Spencer. Like him, I was sexually abused--though in my case by by a “master”, as we called them. Yes, I was bullied by other boys. And yes--though Spencer does not write about his post=pubescent years--I looked desperately for love in the form of adolescent sex with older boys when I was little, and little boys when I became a “senior.” The worst of it, for me, was what Spencer so powerfully evokes: the loneliness, the sense of utter abandonment, being sent away from home at so young an age, when home is supposed to be your refuge, your source of love and comfort, your nourishment. Yet this was all sublimated into the tacit agreement that everything was normal.

No wonder that so many survivors inflicted our pain and anger on the world around us. In Britain, many if not most of the influential people—in politics, in social circles, in the business world—are among the walking wounded. We carry around the shame of a privilege we did nothing to deserve and about which we feel we have no right to complain. The “cry-baby” taunt we remember so well from those early years persists even into middle and old age. We had the very best of educations available anywhere in the world, so what’s to complain about? It’s no accident that there is an organization, these days, called Boarding School survivors, that helps both men and women to confront the wounds.

Another issue Spencer poignantly raises: what was in their heads? The parents? Those who ousted little children from everything they had known and sent them off into the hostile environment of boarding school. Some did it because it was always done in their family this way. Some were happy to pass on the responsibility of child-rearing to others. Some, surely, truly believed it was the best education they could provide. My father at least made that pretense; he even inveigled me into a shared responsibility for the choice—as though a seven-year-old could make such a decision. I suspect, though, that there were darker, more selfish motives involved in sending my sister and me to private school. I have long harbored the dreadful notion that he was glad to get us out of the house, because he was in constant pain with ulcers. Then, too—awful thought—he got our mother to himself. My parents were far from wealthy, and my sister and I were always reminded of the sacrifice they made to afford the cost of private school. I clearly remember the deep offense my father took when I told him, years later, how much I hated school and how much I wished he had made other choices.

I speak for myself, of course, when I say that we don’t crave sympathy, we crave release. I have worked hard over many years to find my own. This book represents another step in Spencer’s own continuing effort to achieve it—not only for himself but for the friends he often addresses as he writes, and freely quotes. He also recognizes, as do I, that there were those who did not suffer as he did, but thrived in that environment. Who were popular, admired by the other boys. Who were smart, easy-going, good at sports, and natural leaders. Who do in fact remember their time at boarding school as “the best years of our lives.”

I admire Spencer for his fortitude and courage in saying things out loud that have too long been left unsaid. A professional journalist and a substantial historian, he writes well, and his narrative is engaging start to finish. I will confess that even I, with all my own experience and all the sympathy in the world, found myself at times pausing along the way to protest, but… this man’s a earl! His education assured a rewarding and successful life. Which only goes to prove my point. But I’m grateful, along with many other readers to be sure, that he faced down that shame of privilege in order to tell a devastating truth—and help others heal.

83 people found this helpful

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Victoria S

Excellent read

Reviewed in the United States on May 10, 2024

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This was an excellent book. I could not put it down. He is a marvelous writer and depicts all of the emotions of that 7 year old boy being sent away and what happened there. I hope he is able to get some of the changes made that he is striving for, such as the age with which a child can be sent to a boarding school and other things.

8 people found this helpful

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Dragonfly

Parents paying for children's mistreatment under the guise of education

Reviewed in the United States on April 4, 2024

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I went to a parochial school from pre-K through Grade 8. Many of the stories and descriptions Charles Spencer provides in his book are almost mirror-like observations I had about the nuns----their petty cruelty, their nastiness, and their bullying. Perhaps my background and always living in fear of the nuns made me immediately understand the place of fear and loneliness the author existed under for the formative years of his childhood. In reality, the school robbed Charles of his youth, innocence, perception of adults, and figures of authority. Corporal punishment was a given, and its painful reminders still cause Charles regret and even a sense of foreboding and loss.
The book also made me wonder about the role of upper class British parents---thinking they are doing their children a world of good, the parents are too wrapped up in their own lives to see----or even want to see---what was going on in these private schools where children were dropped off and almost forgotten
about until the time parents had to take charge of their offspring once again. Children were no more than cogs in a world of abandonment, hurt, anxiety, deprivation, sadness, and childhood grief. Charles does a fine job giving readers a picture of his parents----and their parenting styles. His mother was a social gadabout, intent on her own happiness, with the children's needs not even thought of most of the time. At least Charles' father had a better sense of the parenting role, but he, too, was interested in Charles as the heir, a necessary inconvenience in the British aristocracy.
Charles Spencer's book does an excellent overview of capturing life at a British boarding school. In the midst of all the anxiety he experienced, he still found time to enjoy---at least for a fleeting few moments----some of the childhood pleasures we took for granted: games, free time, friendships, special occasions and a fraternity of fellow souls held together by fate and circumstance.
While these private schools may have provided the "backbone of British society," in reality they were places where cruelty and beatings persisted, with seamy sexual overtones no one could miss in the book.
I found it so disheartening that parents were willing and eager to pay for their own children's mistreatment under the guise of education at the hands of such social and educational misfits who were in charge of running and staffing a school. A sad commentary on parental neglect and a teaching staff's
need to bully, humiliate, ridicule, scorn, and physically punish impressionable hearts and minds. I find it amazing that these children were not broken for life and destined to spend their adult life on a therapist's couch reliving the trauma of their past.

8 people found this helpful

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Savvy Shopper

Hug your children

Reviewed in the United States on March 28, 2024

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Fantastic work. Has throughly disabused me of lifelong romantic notions about boarding schools. I am so grateful for Spencer’s bravery and strength.

17 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

The “inside” perspective wriien by a boarder at Maidwell

Reviewed in Canada on July 20, 2024

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I read this book for personal interest. I enjoyed the author’s writing style in a user friendly manner along with his forthright accounting
While I gleaned an in-depth view of Maidwell, from many viewpoints I’m appalled with its activities and how long these tactics were allowed to exist.

In a way I compare it to the Residential Schools of Canada with their goal of “take the Indian out of the child”
In “A very Private School”, under the guise of education, Maidwell took “the childhood out of the boys”

Alessandra Pani

N/A

Reviewed in Italy on June 13, 2024

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One of the best books I have ever read. Poignant.

Patrick G Cox

Survival …

Reviewed in Germany on April 26, 2024

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A remarkable account, and, for those who study psychology, perhaps a very interesting study. Earl Spencer’s first person account of his childhood in a school that appears to have been set up as the perfect mask for an astonishing amount of child abuse right under the noses of the parents … It certainly confirms studies done in the UK and elsewhere into the impact on a child’s emotional development and the subsequent struggles as adults to empathise with others and function within any relationship.

Bob Moore Australia

British Life for All Boys

Reviewed in Australia on April 17, 2024

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Charles Spencer’s record of boarding school life was not dissimilar to my experience of life in a lowly Secondary Modern School in NW London in the 1960’s. Corporal punishment was the order of the day dished out at will by male teachers who used to carry a cane with them wherever they went in the school. You didn’t have to be guilty of anything and there was no ability to protest. We just put up with the many injustices of it all. And if I complained to my parents I usually got another caning for having “deserved” the one I got at school! We couldn’t win. So we very quickly learned to shut up and just accept that this was the way things were. And even now my life is affected by the way we were treated as boys. The trauma never leaves me and has affected many aspects of my life for which I am still undergoing therapy at the age of 72.
So Charles Spencer’s experience was in many ways no different to the experience and treatment of boys at all levels of society.

I commend the author’s courage in writing this excellent historic account and would recommend it to anyone who may be looking to understand their own similar experience or understand the effect that such brutal treatment on generations of English and colonial boys.

Anne

Educational about truth of "Privilege"

Reviewed in Canada on March 17, 2024

Verified Purchase

This book from Earl Spencer, who I greatly admire opened my eyes. My brother and I confronted my Dad when we were in Elementary school for not sending us to a Private school as he was, My Dad was adamant that a Public (government) school was better and walked away when we demanded a reason.
Now I know why. When I became an adult he told me he almost died from treatment he received and was not expected to live but pulled through. So perhaps it is not a privilege to be privileged..
I would recommend this book. It is not a masterpiece but honest and heartfelt..

6 people found this helpful

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