Charles Spencer

A Very Private School

A Memoir

• Broschiertes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER NPR “BOOKS WE LOVE” 2024 PEOPLE’S “BEST CELEBRITY MEMOIRS” 2024 TOWN & COUNTRY’S “BEST NEW ROYAL BOOKS” 2024 THE TIMES (LONDON) “10 BEST BIOGRAPHIES AND MEMOIRS” 2024 WINNIPEG FREE PRESS’S “BEST BOOKS” 2024 NOW WITH A NEW AFTERWORD “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. And now, in a new afterword, Spencer reflects on the aftermath of his memoir’s publication, including the outpouring of support and solidarity from fellow abuse survivors.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Gallery Books
• Seitenzahl: 320
• Erscheinungstermin: 11. März 2025
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 229mm x 152mm x 20mm
• Gewicht: 299g
• ISBN-13: 9781668046395
• ISBN-10: 1668046393
• Artikelnr.: 70953671

Autorenporträt

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.

Rezensionen

'Top marks for its searing frankness, framed in wistfully beautiful prose'

The Times

'Spencer is acutely observant of the myriad power imbalances at play within this imperial throwback. There has been a steady stream of books about boarding schools in recent years... but two things mark Spencer out from the crowd. First, he is by title and birth the ultimate establishment man, but he's still prepared to take on the shibboleths of his class and upbringing. Second, his turn of phrase is often delightful. A painstaking and traumatic process, but one for which any reader must surely give a cheer'

Daily Telegraph

'Moving... A heartbreaking memoir of a childhood endured at a boarding school 'without love', where abuse was shockingly commonplace'

Financial Times

'This is a story with a clear remit: to confront the British school system with the abuses it has long enabled. There are many graphic details in this book but the allegations have the most impact when read here as a grander narrative about power and how it is abused. As an individual testimony to the abuse that scarred a lifetime and hobbled his marriages, it is a tour de force'

Washington Post

'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 Bernieres

'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