Violence, cruelty and sexual confusion are as much a part of boarding school literature as japes, cricket and a cast of swots, cads and cowards. Alex Renton traces a troubled genre from Rudyard Kipling to JK Rowling 8 April 2017, The Guardian “Michael was ordered to take down his trousers and kneel on the … Continue reading Flogging vice out, virtue in
Fear, lies and abuse: the private school cover-up
A longer version of my article published in The Times, 3 April 2017 It is, they say, good to tell the story. Let it out: nightmares are best cured by daylight. But what do you do next? Three years ago I decided to come out as a survivor of abuse, physical and psychological, at boarding … Continue reading Fear, lies and abuse: the private school cover-up
Stiff Upper Lip in the Times
The Times magazine printed an extract of my new book… You get a very different class of on-line commenter.
Enable children to talk and then listen to them – the only solution
"Cover-up is a British institutional tradition" 4 December 2016 for The Observer: Breaking the silence is immensely powerful and it is good medicine. But speaking up is hard. The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children has data that suggests one out of three people abused as a child has not disclosed the abuse … Continue reading Enable children to talk and then listen to them – the only solution
The free-from-fear diet
23 November 2015 for the Observer as "What is Healthy Eating?": It’s easy to develop a case of the latest psychiatrically acknowledged eating disorder, orthorexia nervosa – an obsession with avoiding foods perceived to be unhealthy. I got one for just £65. That’s the price of an introductory session at London’s Hale Clinic, an alternative therapy … Continue reading The free-from-fear diet
A story for immigrants: the tragic fate of the Anglo-Italians in the Second World War
ON 2 July 1940 the SS Arandora Star was torpedoed off north-west Ireland. The liner was carrying civilian "enemy aliens" from Britain to internment camps in Canada. Nearly 800 of them drowned. Some were German Jews, but most were Italians: grocers, ice-cream vendors, waiters and chefs, many of whom had lived all their lives in Britain. Their families survived, but … Continue reading A story for immigrants: the tragic fate of the Anglo-Italians in the Second World War
Why we should turn our backs on boarding schools
Joy Schaverien boarding school and psychological trauma - an important book in the child abuse debate
Climate change is triggering "extreme geological events", like the Nepal earthquake
Changing pressure on the continent sized plates that make up the planet can cause devastating consequences, as we saw in Nepal on Saturday.
Nathan Myhrvold – dinosaur-hunting, myth-busting physicist geek chef inventor tycoon (and lots of other things too)
Nathan Myhrvold - the most interesting man I've ever had dinner with (sorry, guys!)
Food is too cheap
10 Jan 2015: Thrifty or lavish, we all are now guests at the discounted, buy-one-get-one-free, year-round cheap food feast, eating more than we need and paying less for it – as a proportion of our incomes – than our grandparents did, or their parents before them. This, it turns out, is not entirely a good … Continue reading Food is too cheap
