If you had to go to boarding school...

[callmemadam]

...which fictional one would you choose? I thought this article in the Grauniad deserved a wider audience than the mailing list I got it from. When I was young, it was definitely Malory Towers for me, mainly for the romantic setting (the four towers) and the uniform! Plus the girls actually do quite a lot of work. The fictional schools I'm fond of now tend to be small and unusual: the New Forest school in Princess Charming with its fresh air policy or Angela Brazil's Miss Kaye's. Absolutely not the Chalet School, or Kingscote, or The Farm School.

I did almost go to a fictional school in that the one in Evelyn Finds Herself is based on my own. That's cheating though, as it's a day school and on the whole I prefer day school stories as I like the home life mixed in.

What's yours?

Comments

[lsugaralmond.livejournal.com]

I would love to have gone to Lindbury Preparatory School, from the Jennings and Darbishire books. Although I would have had to be a boy... But they always seemed to have a lot of fun with no really serious consequences, and there was an awful lot of cake and tuck being eaten.

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

And Mr Carter!

[lsugaralmond.livejournal.com]

And Old Wilkie!

[mimmimmim.livejournal.com]

Definitely Mallory Towers. If there had been more books following on from Pam's First Term (Alys Chatwin?) I may have plumped for that, because it had foundlings involved in sinister eastern butterfly cults and that's rather more impressive than Bill's horsiness, but I felt I knew Malory Towers.

Nowadays I'd be a St Trinian's girl all the way.

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

I don't know Pam's First Term, and me with hundreds of school stories! If you like sinister plots, perhaps you've read those extraordinary Radford-Evans books?

I'm more St Cake's than St Trinian's, I think.

[mimmimmim.livejournal.com]

I haven't read many school books. Pam's First Term was an oddity I was given. (Most of my childhood books were secondhand.)

Pam is born to a colonial couple on an island in the far East, but her mother dies. A sinister local butterfly-worshipping cult sees the toddler as the reincarnation of a golden-haired woman who saved the butterfly god, kidnap her and tattoo (faintly) butterfly wings on her back. Father sends toddler to England, boat sinks, fisherman and wife adopt foundling. Fisherman's wife wisely uses one of the pearls in a pouch around the child's neck to send her to private school as a teenager. Cue cricket, amateur dramatics, bitchy other schoolgirls who don't like the fact that Pam's parents are fishermen and she's nobody at all and a rather topping head girl, plus encounters with sinister 'orientals' who persuade Pam to accompany them back to the island. Her father re-encounters his long-lost daughter, the island blows up and the butterfly worshippers sink into the sea, and it turns out good egg head girl is actually Pam's cousin. Hoorah!

It's all rather absurd, and definitely not PC, but somehow entertaining. I think it was minniemoll who told me it was the only Pam book - and I'd been looking for others for years!

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

How bizarre. Alys Chatwin was actually a man called Ernest Protheroe!

[mimmimmim.livejournal.com]

That would explain the cricket match against a boys' school and the practical jokes.

[huskyteer.livejournal.com]

Malory Towers has a fantastic swimming-pool, but would that make up for how horrible the girls are? I can't forgive the attitude that anyone who feels homesick must be a bit of a wrong'un.

I think boys had more fun, so I'd like to change sex and be an 11-year-old at Linbury Court. The school in The Flying Classroom is a nice one too.

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

Just call you Sally, eh? And of course in the pool you have to watch out for unkind girls pushing your head under water to encourage you to swim.

I think this post chat is proving that everyone's favourite school story has 'Jennings' in the title.

[wardy.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure but it most certainly wouldn't have been Greytowers! ;-)

Wardy

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

Do you mean Greyfriars, alma mater of Billy Bunter? Strange thing, but my stepfather, GRHS, who'd been to a rough old council school, absolutely loved The Magnet and those old school stories.

[sloopjonb.livejournal.com]

Me, the third Duke of Saddleworth, in the St Trinian's dorm at one o'clock in the morning? With my reputation? Have they gone mad?

Oh, all right, Linbury Court.

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

Gratters, you've made me laugh.

[debodacious.livejournal.com]

Hogwarts (but only before the return of Voldemort)if I could be sure of not being in Slytherin. Although like everyone else I would be more than happy to find myself a member of the Dorm 1 and Early Bedders' Guided Missile Club.
I would prefer Whyteleaf to MT, I think.

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

I think Whyteleaf would have been too communal for me. Strangely, I think there's more scope for individuality at Malory Towers.