DOWN WITH SKOOL!’ read my father with glee. ‘A guide to school life for tiny pupils and their parents.’ I know it was 1965, because he paused for a moment and said in a rather dreamy voice: ‘I was exactly your age [six] when I was first sent to boarding school. After I’d overcome my initial shock, I loved it.’
Which may explain why his favourite reading matter and the only books he ever read aloud to me were novels about boarding-school life: Tom Brown’s School Days and Billy Bunter of Greyfriars School, The Complete Stalky & Co and Mike and Psmith. Nor, as you might expect, was his collection confined to books purchased when he was still a pupil. It included the ‘Jennings’ series, for example, and even Enid Blyton’s The Naughtiest Girl in the School (although, in fairness, this might have been his idea of a joke).
But the book to which my father returned time and again was the first of the Molesworth tetralogy, DOWN WITH SKOOL!, written by Geoffrey Willans and illustrated by Ronald Searle. Before he ever finished reading me the title page (Contanes FULL LOWDOWN ON SKOOLS, SWOTS, SNEKES, CADS, PRIGS BULIES HEADMASTERS CRIKET FOOPBALL, DIRTY ROTERS FUNKS, PARENTS, MASTERS WIZARD WHEEZES, WEEDS APLE PIE BEDS AND VARIOUS OTHER CHIZZES—IN FACT THE LOT) he was holding back his laughter and so, although only dimly understanding why it was funny, was I.
Denne historien er fra August 30, 2023-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra August 30, 2023-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
