Since 597, students have hauled books among the green lawns and Gothic stone buildings of the world’s oldest boarding school: The King’s School in Canterbury, England. Founded by St. Augustine — patron saint of theologians, printers, and brewers (!) — it’s educated hundreds of thousands of boys over the past 1400 years, including Shakespeare’s rival Christopher Marlowe and Legolas himself, actor Orlando Bloom.
Boarding schools are practically designed for drama in real life and on the page. They’re populated by kids of all ages, and the closed environment is ripe for cliques, bullying, and friendships tighter than family. The built-in power dynamics — students vs. teachers, day schoolers vs. boarders, scholarship kids vs. legacies — are the ideal kindling for entertaining and affecting conflict.
In this episode, we take a romp through the history of boarding school literature, enjoy a virtual tour of the posh school for the world’s elitest students, and celebrate a thirteen-year-old boy who biked sixty miles to make it to the first day of term in 1926. Then we recommend great books that took us back to the school on the page, including a hypnotic murder mystery at an Irish girls’ school, a coming-of-age story at an elite New England institution, a YA horror that begins on Halloween night, a grown-up dark fantasy at a magic school, and a Brontë classic that’s weird and wonderful. (show notes / transcript)
Top image courtesy of Eton College.
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