A revealing account of the abuse that occurs in Britain's elite boarding schools and its long cultural fall-out.
Alex Renton is an award-winning journalist whose career has ranged from theatre criticism, food writing and the investigation of child abuse to work as a political correspondent and war reporter in the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He is also the author of PLANET CARNIVORE. Educated at Ashdown House and Eton, he now lives in Edinburgh with his wife, son and daughter.
At last, a scrupulously honest insight into private boarding
education in Britain - ranging from the abuse to which it subjects
the child, and the family, to the abuse of Britain's social order
in laying the foundation to buying your child's way to the top
*Jon Snow*
Renton mixes memoir and anecdote with deeply researched history...
this is a brave and necessary book
*GUARDIAN*
A thoughtful and sensitive indictment of one of the cornerstones of
the British establishment
*OBSERVER*
Gruelling and gripping
*EVENING STANDARD*
Renton has the thirst for truth, and for exposing depravity, of a
Gitta Sereny
*THE TIMES*
[A] masterful expose of private school perversion
*SKY NEWS*
Stiff Upper Lip is shocking, gripping and sobering
*SUNDAY TELEGRAPH*
Enormously valuable
*DAILY MAIL*
Stiff Upper Lip kept me absolutely enthralled ... Even if you never
went near a public school, the book is a phenomenal read: it kept
me up all night
*NEWSTALK*
Impressive in its breadth and depth
*DAILY EXPRESS*
Stiff Upper Lip is a furious, closely researched polemic against
boarding school
*COUNTRY LIFE*
Quite breathtaking ... If you want to understand anything about
institutional abuse it is required reading
*LBC*
Grimly absorbing
*NEW STATESMAN*
This is a fascinating book
*PROSPECT*
Personal revelations are expertly woven into interview material,
social history and theorising by psychologists and other writers
... Renton deserves praise and attention for disturbing our
equanimity about this tradition
*FINANCIAL TIMES*
This is a well-researched study, which draws on a variety of
historical sources in addition to some searing near-contemporary
accounts of childhood unhappiness and its long-lasting effects
*THE TABLET*
Brilliantly deconstructs the myth of the British stiff upper
lip
*Rod Liddle*
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