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"To be a boy at one of these schools was to be both tyrant and slave"

18th century British Public Schools were hotbeds of violence and uproar, despite their deeply Christian origins. From raucous rebellions featuring students fighting armed militias, and building barricades and taking hostages and firing pistols, to animal assassinations, abysmal teaching and gruesome hazing rituals, their organized brutality was sold as "character building." And as late as 1979 one student had reportedly been caned over 630 times. 

Keith himself was part of this institution. Dropped off at the headmasters office aged nine by his parents, he wasn't to know that he wouldn't see them for a year, or for that matter that he was even being admitted. He was immediately immersed in its hazing rituals, and is well placed to talk about these ancient institutions - their past and their future.