Charles Spencer’s A Very Private School begins with a dedication, “For Buzz”, and a quote from Hilary Mantel: “I am writing in order to take charge of my childhood.” It is not until the end of this searing, heartbreaking book that the full import of both these statements becomes clear.
The school in question is Maidwell Hall, a turreted Northamptonshire prep school “without love” and with an “inner heart that contained something sinister in the lining of its critical valves… a beautiful place under a dark power”. The English boarding-school system occupies a wide place in the national psyche, and Spencer’s take on Maidwell is much closer to Flashman than Hogwarts, as evidenced by some of the chapter titles – ‘Willing Henchmen’, ‘Blood on the Floor’, ‘Facing the Past’.
I arrived at Maidwell just after Spencer (today the 9th Earl, and younger brother of the late Diana) left, in 1977. The school I remember was an altogether more temperate and kindly place than his, for one main reason: I had only one year with Alec Porch, a headmaster of terrifying malevolence, base paedophilic tendencies, craven snobbery, and a mania for secrecy and control (hence the title of Spencer’s book).
Quoting Solzhenitsyn – “unlimited power in the hands of limited people always leads to cruelty” – Spencer portrays Porch, who died in 2022, as charming to parents and vile to pupils, a monstrous Janus who acted “as prince, parliament and police chief” in his kingdom. “He didn’t like boys,” Spencer adds, “but he did enjoy hurting them” with one of two canes, the Flick and the Swish. The accounts of how Porch would alternately beat and fondle a cursed chosen few pupils are at times almost unbearable to read, as are the passages about another master who would take photos of naked boys, and the heavily-trailed accounts of Spencer’s abuse at the hands of a young assistant matron.
This book, however, is about much more than simply the headline passages. Even allowing for the retrospective wisdom of age, Spencer is acutely observant of the myriad power imbalances at play within this imperial throwback – “the last of the Victorians”, as a friend says – the teachers who meant well but refused to call out the abuse, the bullying prefects who curried favour by finding miscreants for Porch to beat, and the matrons who guarded their turf with attack-dog intensity.