Stiff Upper Lip: Secrets, Crimes and the Schooling of a Ruling Class - Hardcover

Renton, Alex

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1474600549 ISBN 13: 9781474600545

Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2017

Synopsis

'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.

About this title

Review

At last, a scrupulously honest insight into private boarding education in Britain - ranging from the abuse to which it subjects the child, and the family, to the abuse of Britain's social order in laying the foundation to buying your child's way to the top (Jon Snow)

Renton mixes memoir and anecdote with deeply researched history... this is a brave and necessary book (Sam Leith GUARDIAN)

A thoughtful and sensitive indictment of one of the cornerstones of the British establishment (Andrew Anthony OBSERVER)

Gruelling and gripping (William Moore EVENING STANDARD)

Renton has the thirst for truth, and for exposing depravity, of a Gitta Sereny (Ysenda Maxtone-Graham THE TIMES)

[A] masterful expose of private school perversion (Sam Kiley SKY NEWS)

Stiff Upper Lip is shocking, gripping and sobering (Rupert Christiansen SUNDAY TELEGRAPH)

Enormously valuable (John Preston DAILY MAIL)

Stiff Upper Lip kept me absolutely enthralled ... Even if you never went near a public school, the book is a phenomenal read: it kept me up all night (George Hook NEWSTALK)

Impressive in its breadth and depth (Harry Hodges DAILY EXPRESS)

Book Description

A revealing account of the abuse that occurs in Britain's elite boarding schools and its long cultural fall-out.

About this edition

• Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1474600549
• ISBN 13: 9781474600545
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 416