A Very Private School

By: Charles Spencer

Narrated by: Charles Spencer

'Shocking and moving' Guardian

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

At eight years of age, Charles Spencer was sent away to one of England's most England's most exclusive boarding schools. Here he reveals the strange secrets of the school, and the culture of cruelty and abuse he experienced in his five years there as pupil.

Spencer reflects on the misery, hopelessness and abandonment he felt aged eight, viscerally describing the intense pain of homesickness and the vicious brutality of a boys' school in the 1970s. All these years later, Spencer's bafflement at the teachers' motivations to inflict such cruelty on young children in palpable. As is his fury that, even if somehow he had spoken up, he'd never have been believed.

Charles Spencer's book 'A Very Private School' was a Sunday Times bestseller w/c 11-03-2024.

©2024 Charles Spencer (P)2024 HarperCollins Publishers

Heartache

Listening to this book made me so incredibly sad ALL the way through. I hope it healed you a little in writing it. I also hope that parents treasure their children and protect them.

Thank you for teaching us, sir.

I feel like parents/guardians/educators in particular should be aware of the contents of this book.

Brave and extremely emotional intelligent author

What a brave author /inspiring author we need more men to share this tragic ordeals to prevent them from happening to others.well done and thank you charles

Trauma & it's consequences, an excellent insight

It seems wrong to say this book is brilliant given the difficult topic it covers. However, the insight with which it is written, the language chosen, the sensitivity & fairness comes across throughout the writing. I believe that this book has the potential for a much broader audience to gain insight through reflection on how incidents in their own past could have impacted their lives & possibly open a conversation to address possible past trauma still impacted their lives today. Thank you Charles for reading this yourself, it couldn't have been easy. I know through the writing of this book for you & the reading of this book for others, change will occur.