Public school

The year is 1993 and 16-year-old Tommo has been moved from a day state school of 2,000 pupils in brown blazers that ‘when it rained… smelled of shit’ to Eskmount, an elite Scottish boarding school, where boys wear kilts and put their ‘cocks on your shoulder’ when you’re working in the library (easier in a kilt) and routinely hang ‘smaller kids in duvets… out the window’. The horseshoe effect in schooling terms: the more expensive, the more savage. Hugo Rifkind’s Rabbits opens with a bang: ‘When the shotgun went off under Johnnie Burchill’s brother’s chin, word had it, the top of his head came off like the top of a

‘James Scudamore is now a force in the English novel,’ says Hilary Mantel on the cover of English Monsters, which, given that it’s his fourth book, has the whiff of a backhanded compliment (‘Have you lost weight?’). But despite its less exotic setting than his earlier novels, there is a reach and scope here that makes me think Mantel might be right. This is an English public school story (come back!) that gives us four decades in the life of Max Denyer. Max’s jet-setting parents leave him in the care of the sort of sparky grandfather of whom Roald Dahl would approve (gadgets, projects, home-made cider vinegar: ‘Electric jolt. Scalp