Early on in his engaging and long overdue narrative, David Turner poses the key question: How did these uniquely British institutions fall into a state akin to that described in Tom Brown's Schooldays (complete with the bullying antics of Harry Flashman) and then, latterly, reemerge as world and market leaders and centers for educational excellence? Indeed, the whole history of the public school movement can be seen in that light, as a series of cycles in which periods of high recruitment and pupil retention have been followed by neglect, poor teaching, pupil unrest, and rumors of malpractice, including, sadly, sexual abuse. Even today, with many of these schools global in their reputation, intake, and outreach, they continue to excite debate and cause controversy. Recent left-leaning discussion and media commentary in the United Kingdom, for example, has been quick to point to the high percentage of public school boys (and specifically old Etonians) in the cabinet while, as Turner himself notes, their alumni continue to dominate the higher echelons of the legal professions and the civil service. Even Britain's Olympic success can be linked to the “playing fields of Eton,” with a little over half of the medalists at the last two Olympic Games having had some form of public school experience.

How and why this should be given that private education caters to only 8 percent of the population is something discussed in one of the later chapters. It cuts to the very heart of the schools' ethos: a more personalized education with small class sizes, top-of-the-line facilities, and the chance for extracurricular activity in a range of environments as well as the opportunities to network with other similarly privileged students. In return for paying annual fees above the average salary, one would perhaps expect little else. Beyond this, though, public schools are emblematic of what the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu meant when he talked of “cultural capital” and actor “networks”—crudely, who you know as much as what you know—and the level of social confidence and immaculate self-presentation that these schools take pride in instilling in their charges. Public school, Turner's book contends, works especially in the connections they foster and the attributes they develop. There is a reason, perhaps, why the front cover is adorned simply by an old school tie! Turner, a journalist, is no academic—and all the better for it—but he must write in the face academic arguments, supported by Bourdieu but also many others, that such establishments are both archaic and iniquitous and contribute to the burgeoning gap between the rich and poor. For those tastes, this book may be too “safe,” and Turner makes no attempt to hide both his own background (public school, although he neglects to mention which) and his essential sympathy for the good that they continue to do. The pie, he acknowledges, may be unequally divided, but through the academic innovation and wealth creation of these schools' alumni, he argues, everyone's share ends up ultimately being larger. Overall, though, this refusal to condemn contributes to a fair and balanced narrative that is as keen to probe into the difficult past as it is the contentious present.

Indeed, it is in its historical discussion that the book really shines, and a rollicking good yarn it is, too. Never overtly bogged down by politics or dry statistics, Turner has an easy way of making the characters and the institutions with their own varying idiosyncrasies come alive, a holdover perhaps from his journalistic background. We too easily forget perhaps that these schools (and the reason behind their name that has so confused generations of tourists) were started initially as places for scholars from the local area—literally worthy and diligent members of the public who through their poverty were barred from the sorts of opportunities that a rigorous education could give them. The key figure in all of this was the early lord chancellor William of Wykeham, who set up Winchester College (the first public school whose alumni still bear his name) as a place to allow for such social mobility. The idea, therefore, of charitable benevolence is a strong strand throughout the narrative, with men such as Richard Mulcaster of Merchant Taylors', Samuel Butler of Shrewsbury, and, most famously, Thomas Arnold of Rugby seeing it as their duty to educate Christian gentlemen destined to lead and govern the nation and its attendant arms of government, church, and empire. Arnold in particular was famous for his notion of “muscular Christianity,” in which able boys of various backgrounds, inculcated in the world of prefects, hierarchy, and games playing, were prepared for disseminating these manly British virtues to the world at large.

Laudable though these ambitions may have been, the schools themselves were slow to adapt to the modern world, with classics dominating at the expense of the sciences while elsewhere beatings, punishment, and revolts continued to prevail and exhibit a dark side of these establishments, so well satirized in films like Lindsay Anderson's 1968 drama, If. Likewise, public schools for girls continued to propagate traditionalist feminine virtues with classes in deportment and house crafts, thereby promoting gendered roles not merely in the classrooms but also society at large. The book is particularly strong on these areas, and it is refreshing to see Dorothea Beale and Frances Buss shown as the equals of the more famous male pioneers. Altogether, the book excels in explaining how public schools could be both progressive and hidebound.

Of course, moves towards equality in society via universal compulsory state education as espoused in the 1944 Education Act (initially through selection at eleven) led to what looked like the final chapter in these schools' lives. Meritocracy was the watchword and familial wealth, connections or, simply, good, upstanding character were no longer a passport to academic or career success; with state grammar schools for every able child proliferating and borrowing from the ethos of the private sector, the lure and luster of an elite public school education no longer had quite the same appeal. In Britain, three prime ministers of the 1970s (Heath, Wilson and Thatcher) were products of the new state grammar school system, and even today these selective institutions compete with their fee-paying counterparts in the academic league tables.

However, what Turner's superb book ultimately shows is that the public schools do not lack in determination and resiliency and that their comparative autonomy from central government has led in recent years to innovation, development, excellence, and some of the finest pastoral care imaginable. Contrary to popular wisdom, Turner contends, we are living in the golden age of public schools. A modern day Arnold, Anthony Seldon of Wellington, encourages yoga and meditation classes, for example, and despairs of the “exam factories” most schools have turned into, taking instead a more holistic and progressive view of education. It is this spirit that now guides many of these public schools and that will undoubtedly ensure their survival for another six centuries against the slings and arrows of iniquity and class division. It can only be hoped that they are as well served by chroniclers as we are with the current volume.