That first night, and on other nights to come, the little men in ties and jackets reverted to the little children they really were – in name-taped pyjamas with a single soft toy (also name-taped), blubbing themselves to sleep and wetting their beds. One of the first things we learned – or felt – at prep school was a deep, emotional austerity, starting from the moment the parents drove away. I remember the feeling of desolate homesickness: abruptly, several times a year, our attachments to home and family were broken And no one pays hundreds of pounds a term, even in the late 70s, to learn nothing. Cameron has his boyishly unlined face and Johnson his urchin’s unbrushed hair, and his arch schoolboy’s vocabulary.īut what kind of boyhood was it, in our paid-for rooms in those repurposed mansions that housed our schools? What of the distant past still works in us as adults and can we pass on the harm to others? Are we the right people to steer the country, either clear of trouble or in the direction of sunlit uplands? The answer to these questions depends on lessons learned at an impressionable age. They look confident of not being caught, or not being punished if they are. They can never quite carry off the role of grownup, or shake a suspicion that they remain fans of escapades without consequences.

It is noticeable, and often noticed, that something immature and boyish survives in men like Cameron and Johnson as adults. 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. We were being trained for leadership, or if not to lead then to earn. They were paying for a similar upbringing with a similar intended result: to establish our credentials for the top jobs in the country. The exact school picked out by the parents didn’t really matter, because the experience was designed to produce a shared mindset. And if the character of our leaders matters then I’m in possession of important information.Īt the age of 13, after prep school, Cameron and Johnson progressed to Eton. I know neither of these men personally but I do know that they spent the formative years of their childhood in boarding schools being looked after by adults who didn’t love them, because I did too. This means I know how two of the past three British prime ministers were treated as children and the kind of men their schools wanted to make of them. A term earlier David Cameron had left his family home for Heatherdown preparatory school in Berkshire, while also in 1975, at the age of 11, Alexander Johnson was sent to board at Ashdown House in East Sussex. My first night at Pinewood school was two days after my eighth birthday in January 1975.

Enlightened beans