The Rest is History Episode 369 The History Behind Hogwarts: Ancient Schools and Revolting Students looks at the history public (i.e. private) school in England. it’s ‘public’ because they are open to anyone who can pay, and this differentiates them from ‘private’ tuition at home, apparently. It’s a follow up from the earlier episode about Harry Potter. Originally public schools were conducted by charitable trusts. William of Wickham, himself the son of the peasants who ended up in the court of Edward III, started the first one. During 14th century they taught reading, writing and Latin and they were set up as cathedral schools. During the Black Death, when maybe 1/2 of the English population died, William of Wickham was worried that there were not going to be enough priests so he established New College, Oxford, and Winchester. These schools provided an ascetic, monastic environment. They were intended for poor, but clever, students but “special friends” of the school were accommodated as well (i.e. they paid). A century later Royal Patronage was extended to Our Ladye of Eton, and Merchant Taylors School, established in 1561 offered a more rounded education including sports. There were no few girls’ schools, and those that did exist were closed during the Reformation. By 1700s public schools were corrupt, violent and offered a poor quality of education. Drawing on a sense of Tory libertarianism, students rioted, killed animals, hazed newcomers and the system of fagging was a form of abuse. Many of the boys from this environment went on to be ‘Empire Men’ in positions of authority throughout the Empire – who knows what they took with them from their schooling. The episode draws a lot on David Turner’s book The Old Boys: The Decline and Rise of the Public School which sounds interesting (available online SLV).
History Extra: One Day in the British Empire. This new book sounds fantastic- it’s by Matthew Parker and it’s called One Fine Day: Britain’s Empire on the Brink. He takes 29 September 1923, the day when Britain took over the Palestinian mandate, which made it the day on which the British Empire was the largest that it would ever be (things started to fall apart pretty soon afterwards). He takes the British Empire as a whole, and by consulting newspapers, Colonial Office correspondence received and sent on that day, and novels from right across the empire, he illustrates the diversity and complexity of Empire. What a brilliant idea- I hope that he executed it well. (And I might just have to read it to find out if he did).
BBC Global News Podcast. This is my go-to listening when I wake up in the middle of the night. I don’t usually include it here because the podcast is, as you might expect, too topical and by the time I post this summary, things have moved on. But they had an excellent segment called Gaza Special: Your Questions Answered and it is well worth listening to, even if it’s not the middle of the night.
The Resident Judge of Port Phillip 