David Redshaw

Excellently illustrated and comprehensive. One of the most thorough I've seen on the subject.

This is an unusual book in that Charone makes no attempt to overwrite, play with words or indulge in purple prose - and is probably better for it. Her style is that of the diarist, almost talking aloud in a breathless, throwaway, "gassed-to-be-in-the-music-biz" fashion. I could have done with more of her thoughts on the music involved and I do wonder whether her move from critic to PR person hasn't diplomatically cramped her style here. But it's still a thoroughly entertaining romp through half a century of pop. And no Barbara, you don't have to apologise for having slagged off triple-album extravaganzas by Yes.

On P232 of Posh Boys Robert mentions that Christ's Hospital is one of the independent schools that has managed to survive and fulfill its ancient mission of providing for a proportion of the less well off. Not quite so true these days. When I was at the school in the 1950s it took in no full fee-payers, one of the only schools proudly conforming to its brief. Now it takes in 24%, and they are fat fees. The reason is that the school now provides an eye-watering array of extra-curricular facilities (an indoor bouldering wall is the latest) along with a very long list of specialist coaches in arts, sports and music. They can't balance the books any longer and are now locked into a contest with the Etons and Harrows to provide amazing facilities. They now describe themselves as an "international boarding school". Expect the ancient mission to be diluted further.

Nick's theory is that the psychological and emotional deprivation that youngsters go through when sent away to these boarding schools at a young age may hobble their empathetic faculties in later life, giving them a lethal combination of a false sense of self, combined with the arrogance that comes from being only among your own privileged class. They then go on through the networking of public school and Oxbridge to govern the country. Cameron, Osborne, Johnson, Rees-Mogg.......need one say more?

My old boarding school hastens to assure me that things have changed - no more beatings, cold baths, huge communal dormitories, and of course mobile phones keep you in touch with mum and dad - but as Renton and Nick Duffell have emphasised, there cannot be love in these institutions. Support maybe, along the lines of: "Come on old chap, buck up, you'll get used to it", but love, no. How damaging is this to a small child who perhaps comes to believe that he or she can do without it? Or indeed that they themselves do not need to love anyone? Who do you love in a boarding school? Just at the age when children might get a pet as a present at Christmas in order to develop their caring facilities. Love in boarding schools is strictly supervised and usually discouraged whether between the same sex in early teens (a not unusual occurrence at that age) or between the sexes in a co-ed school where the need to prevent pregnancies means that the school has to be vigilant to the point of paranoia, in which case the pupils may feel that there is something unhealthy about it. Isn't it the parents' job to gently police these matters in a more relaxed, family setting? And isn't it the mother's job to induct her daughter into the practicalities of puberty and first periods? And what about the need for comfort when their first love affairs break down and those tough little adolescent cookies suddenly become heaps of weeping jelly? This is what families, not strangers are for.

This book is a much-needed update on how the upper classes have moved swiftly over recent decades to leave behind the muscular-Christianity, militaristic, classics orientated days of Tom Brown and Flashman and equip themselves for the modern age. Living conditions are better now than when I was one of thirty boys in a dormitory. More privacy, more comfort. And I now find that there are six dedicated arts teachers at my old school whereas in my day there were two. Likewise with sports coaches. Nothing is lacking, the boarding schools haven't missed a trick. Before, music would have meant learning to read it and haltingly playing Bach and Mozart on piano. Now, my old alma mater has produced a rapper and a flamenco dancer - and maybe others that I haven't heard about. What is missing of course is funding - in the state school system. But I suppose that's another story. In the 60s the nobs were learning how to relate to mass culture. Today they've perfected it.