This book is not for me. It is very opinionated rant about private education. I felt that it wasn’t a balanced argument.

The subtitle of this book lets the reader know what to expect. The author wrote this during the pandemic & in the time he was writing it he spent a lot of time walking through the school he attended. The notion of sending a child away from the ages of seven to eighteen (one of the most impressionable time of a person's life) is an extremely strange one to many cultures. The ones Richard Beard is mostly concerned with are the ones where names need to be put down at birth, the schools which are considered to the best. The likes of David Cameron & Boris Johnson are the products of these institutions and this book explains an awful lot! This was a very interesting perspective & very topical.

I'm not sure how balanced this book was. There were many abuses at independent schools but there were also good things too. I worked for many years in a Scottish independent school & although I know there were things that went on that weren't good I also know that the people I worked with, cared for those in their care. Thanks to Netgalley & the publisher for letting me read & review this book.

This book is a perfect combination of excellent research, backed by personal recollections to fully flesh out the author's message. Richard Beard studied at one of the elite boys' boarding schools in England in the 70s, at the same time as David Cameron, Boris Johnson, among others currently in the UK Cabinet. This book is his attempt at making sense of that defining experience, and how it shapes character-mostly for the worse.
I grew up reading books by Enid Blyton, that made boarding school life seem absolutely wonderful, with midnight feasts and pranks on sympathetic teachers and so on. Most non-fiction works about boarding school life, however, don't depict it as idyllic at all. Apart from his personal anecdotes, Beard includes psychological studies, statistics, depictions in other media, to explore these formative years of the people who constitute more than half of the senior levels of UK's justice system, bureaucracy, government, the BBC, the financial sector. A lot of the attitudes that are valorised in school stories-scoffing at people who are homesick, an absolute repression of emotions, never telling tales ( good in principle, easy to be misused to cover up actual injustices), loyalty to your school irrespective of the circumstances, viewing everyone else with a combination of suspicion and condescension; these aren't normal or desirable at all, for the real world. These attitudes were developed at a time in the 17th and 18th centuries, when the purpose of these schools was to train children for the Army or the Navy, where they were being trained essentially to kill, be killed and/or send their subordinates to their deaths, and to build an Empire where you thought you knew best for your supposed subjects. Beard however, shows that these methods of pedagogy and groupthink continue well into the 20th Century ( and probably the 21st as well), far beyond the point of their relevance. He goes on to explain the lasting influence of these attitudes and the deleterious effect when these are the views held by a majority of people with the power to influence policy.
For me, personally, this book perfectly described my schooldays, and gave me an insight into what the schools were essentially trying to do. Beard has a powerful paragraph where he writes about how the function of the school was to break a child's spirit completely till they could be moulded into homogenous pod-people, for all practical purposes. I was miserable all through my schooldays ( and I've studied in multiple schools, across the country, given the nature of my father's job), and I completely related to this book-both to the descriptions of the attitudes of the teachers with all their sarcasm, frequent and near-constant use of ritual public humiliation, arbitrary but extremely draconian imposition of pointless rules and control, from the length of the ribbons in your hair to the length of your skirt, and the behaviour of students, with loyalties that shifted suddenly, divisions into people worth speaking to and those who weren't, petty exercises of control. I can so clearly see how these behaviours are carried over into nearly every other interaction as you grow up-you never outgrow this pernicious training instilled in you at a young age, and people's reactions-at the workplace, speaking to your neighbours, in the parking lot-you're still that kid trying to show you're the one doing the bullying, and not the hapless victim.

This books gives you a unique perspective into the British boarding school. An enjoyable read with a great mix of fact and story.

This book is an attack, launched on several fronts, upon the institution that is the English public (private) boarding school. Beard draws from personal experience in two of these hallowed institutions, and weaves together a picture of the trauma they inflict on their inmates, the kind of men (in particular) they churn out, and the scale of the damage these people have done on the public life of Great Britain.

I think the strongest parts of this book were where Beard detailed his own experiences of schooling in the public school system. It could have done with more of this in my opinion. He spends quite a time parsing his inocuous-sounding diary entries from his time at school, and trying to construe how these are in fact completely disingenuous, that they in fact conceal a great abyss of misery and submission to a totalitarian regime. Indeed, this argument is employed frequently throughout the book (toffs never mean what they say). But he doesn't provide much of a key as to how their words should be interpreted besides simply thinking the worst of them at all times, which seems like a less than satisfactory rule.

For what it's worth, I think most of his points - about the emotional and psychological ills these schools do, the knock on effects of having their products lead the country/empire etc. - are sound. They're really not particularly complex or difficult to explain, and I think this book could have doubled its impact if it had halved its page count. The author unfortunately falls into the trap of, having identified a problem, portraying it as little less than the source of every evil in the world. Basically every megalomaniac dictator of the 20th century is the product of a boarding school environment - even if they didn't go to boarding school they may as well have, they were just so damn evil. His argument was severely weakened (for me at least) by overarguing ('England traditionally reserves places at the top table for louts with 0 brains.' Even if this is riffing off Molesworth, I think it's a cheap shot.) Why can't we assess the problem a little more objectively without collapsing into catastrophism? (If Beard is too emotionally attached to the subject-matter to be able to make this judgement, perhaps his editor should have.) The book would have given the impression of balance had it included some of Beard's positive remembrances of Radley, but there was almost none of this at all.

Another weakness is that, although boarding schools may well do a lot of harm to kids, much of the harm Beard describes is equally in evidence in all schools, boarding or not. Class rankings, marks, damaged teachers, trying physical demands, even beatings - these are/were hardly the domain solely of boarding schools. The trouble with this book is that it doesn't really give any light, and it's obvious why. Because even if boarding schools were abolished (as Labour wanted/wants), school would still be a difficult place. It's kind of the inherent nature of schools and more generally of childhood as an existential condition. Life happens, you're forced to leave your comfort zones, and bad things happen. But this happens to all kids, no matter what kind of school they're at. People can be plenty screwed up without having been through boarding school; however, this book really makes it seem as if boarding school is the root of all evil.

Beard doesn't even make clear what he is advocating for. Abolition? Or just strict reform?

For all this, I enjoyed Beard's writing style, which was engaging and witty, if tending caustic. Because the book's too long, he tends to cover ground multiple times, even if it's at different registers (particularly about how much boys are damaged by being stripped of their parents - often with lashings of sarcasm), which I found tedious. This stuck out to me because I read it in a couple of days, but maybe this would have annoyed me less if I'd read it over a fortnight.

It feels like this was a cathartic book for Beard to write, and I'm pleased for him if that's the case. Probably it might make cathartic reading for traumatised/repressed English public school old boys. It presents little of substance most people (surely, deep down) didn't know already, so I can appreciate it more as a work of extended autobiography than as history or polemic or whatever else. Its arguments are strained and subjective enough that it probably won't convince someone who is pro-boarding school, or even sympathetic or nostalgic about the concept.

(Full disclosure: I'm not British and didn't go to a boarding school. These are my impressions from the book itself.)

I received a free copy of this book from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.

Engaging, charming and quietly captivating, Richard Beard has produced a fine overview of his experience of being sent to boarding school aged 8 and the damage that resulted. What makes it more than merely an autobiographical account, alongside wry observations like "I was luck. I was good at the stuff that mattered - at lessons, emotional repression and rugby", is his extension of his experience to capture the negative effects on British politics and society. The themes of pretence, performance, superficiality and scapegoating that he picks out go a long way to explain the position the England and the UK find themselves in. This is an excellent, slightly sideways overview of our times.

I’ve long been fascinated by boarding schools and the history behind them and the various people who attended them. So when I saw this title I knew I wanted to check it out!
Premise
In 1975, as a child, Richard Beard was sent away from his home to sleep in a dormitory. So were David Cameron and Boris Johnson.

In those days a private boys' boarding school education was largely the same experience as it had been for generations: a training for the challenges of Empire. He didn't enjoy it. But the first and most important lesson was to not let that show.

Being separated from the people who love you is traumatic. How did that feel at the time, and what sort of adult does it mould?
It was very interesting to read Richards story and the various going ons inside the boarding school community. What is myth what is truth and I found it very fascinating and interesting. I was shocked to find out some people I didn’t even know attended boarding school attended boarding school. Like Priyanka Chopra for example.

"If in hindsight our education seems unbelievable, the consequences are increasingly apparent. Fragile, entitled, in good times and bad we revert to what we learned as boys. But what was that, exactly?"

Author, Richard Beard, takes you on a trip down memory lane to find out. He shared the same boarding school education as twenty-eight of the last thirty-two UK Prime Ministers and uses these shared experiences to allow the reader a better understanding for how the men they became were shaped from the boys they once were.

Beard was shipped to boarding school at the tender age of eight. Many years later, and in the midst of a pandemic, he returned, both in person and in memory. Some fond memories of his time at school remains, and admits that he "was good at the stuff that mattered - at lessons, emotional repression, and rugby." However, he remembers most of his time at school with disbelief and horror.

Despite not entering the school until the 1970s, little had altered since pre-WWII. A gung-ho attitude, an unshakable belief in the importance of the self, and a love for the Britannia that ruled the waves remained. Physical activities and their study also focused upon the war and the boys remained almost entirely unaware of current events or the contemporary world around them.

Upon entry, the boys lost their names, which were replaced by nicknames, and they lost their families, which were replaced by adults who didn't love them. They were raised by their peers, their tutors, and what "institutional psychiatrists sometimes call the 'brick mother'."

So why was this harsh upbringing so revered? Beard explains that the "most convincing reason to go to a private school remains to have gone to a private school, with the prizes that are statistically likely to follow. Want to be a senior judge? Sixty-five per cent of them had the same education that helped form almost half the country's newspaper columnists and two out of the last three prime ministers."

What does this mean for the country then? Unfortunately, it means that those with the authority to change it are those who have benefitted from it not changing. They have been taught not to rock the boat and to maintain the old boy's club that gave them their positions. They grew up in an isolated community of others just like them and so have little understanding for the experiences of others. They were drilled in emotional repression and so they do not contain the ability to walk in another's shoes or to understand another perspective. Their lives have been cushioned and to soldier on, never apologise, and not consider the alternative is all they have ever known.

Throughout, Beard appears unapologetically angry at this elite world, whilst also acknowledging that he too benefitted from it. He passes this anger onto the reader through his personal experiences and through the information of the disgusting privilege many receive.

Want to know why Boris Johnson or David Cameron, and so many others, remain so out of touch with the majority of British citizens? This book will tell you why.

An interesting exploration of private education in England and its strange manifestations in seats of power around the world. It was a bit more introspective than I was expecting--mostly focusing on the author's experience of private schools rather than a social history--but fascinating nonetheless.

Sad Little Men is partly a book about Richard Beard's experiences as a public school student in the 1970's and partly the effect that these institutions have had on Britain as public schoolboys have a disproportionate amount of power and influence in our military,political, legal , journalistic and corporate systems. Beard is a contemporary of David Cameron, Boris Johnson and much of the current government and shows how public school not only makes such people totally unsuited to represent anyone but their own kind but why so often they're somewhat odd and dysfunctional characters .
I struggled at first with Beard's writing style, often it's very much a stream of consciousness that jumps around and he flits from the personal to comments that are aimed at one ex public schoolboy in particular. A few chapters in I'd got used to it and was a lot more gripped than I thought I'd be.
Beard tells how the public schoolboys of his era are often barely equipped to handle everyday life ,let alone run a country, he tells of 8 year olds expected to "man up" as their parents entrust them to strangers, broken and damaged adolescents being moulded into future leaders of an Empire and social structure that were already history. those same ill-equipped , emotionally and socially stunted young men are then fast-tracked via the "network" of those who went before them into jobs and positions that affect those they have no chance of relating to.
A book I chose to read out of vague interest and found myself engrossed in. Richard Beard bares his souls and the plight of what are usually considered entitled young people getting the best start in life if often very moving,sometimes tragic., their effect on the country often devastating.

This was an interesting read! The plot was astray a few times but the emotions and message conveyed was thought provoking. I loved the setting. Giving this book a solid 3 stars