A Private Place [Paperback]

Viciously clever...will cause distress in liberal circles

Genuinely gripping

Ruthless honesty and jet-black wit

A delicate love story, a touching Bildungsroman for our troubled time.

Written by the author of "Foreign Bodies", this is a frightening story of adolescent power-games and sex-games played out among the beautiful, crumbling neo-classical buildings of a progressive public school. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

A Private Place is a satire on progressive educational theories, including that of co-educational boarding schools. It is, as far as I know, the first novel to have been set in one and while it could not have been written had I not myself attended Bedales, its features are inspired by many of these establishments, from Dartington and Marlborough to Stowe and Millfield. It describes a deadly power-struggle between a quartet of sixth-form pupils. Alice, the Headmaster's sister-in-law is relentlessly bullied by Johnny Tore, son of a pop-star and leader of The Lads, a group to which Grub Viner also belongs. When Winthrop T. Sheen, a much-expelled American Preppy arrives he sets off a series of events that even snobbery and ideology cannot ignore.

Knotshead is a progressive boarding school in the West Country. It looks like Arcadia but its staff are blinded by ideology and its pupils hypnotised by snobbery, sex and the sadistic Johnny Tore.

When Winthrop T. Sheen, a mush-expelled American preppy, arrives he falls in love with the chaste and despised Alice, setting off a school underground power struggle that leads from fear and loathing to the greatest crime of them all.

This is a magical novel of politics, hate, music, the crushing of innocence and redemption through love. Nobody who has seen the public face of co-education should be without 'A Private Place'.

‘Ruthless honesty and jet black wit.’
KATE SAUNDERS, 'Cosmopolitan'

‘Genuinely gripping.’
HARRIET WAUGH, 'Spectator'

‘A delicate love story, a touching 'Bildungsroman' for our troubled time.’
VALENTINE CUNNINGHAM, 'Observer'

‘An intelligent fairy tale. Craig writes clearly and wittily with all the smart observations that made her first book more than just romantic pap.’
TIME OUT

‘An original tale of anarchy’
MAUREEN OWEN, 'Daily Mail'

Amanda Craig was born in 1959. She is married, with two children, lives in London and reviews widely.

The sudden acquisition of power does not go to the head, but to the groin. In some, it promotes lust; in others, supplants it. Those on whom its effect is purely cerebral may indeed be counted as fortunate.
Simon Hart was not a vain man, but he flattered himself that he had a talent for publicity. It was for this, he knew, that he had been appointed over the heads of so many distinguished rivals. Lank-haired, bespectacled, and with the choleric complexion of a slice of gammon, he was not on first appearances a likely maestro at presenting the silver lining to every cloud. Yet so he had proved, and would prove again. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.