Charles Spencer's memoir 'A Very Private School' opens up about boarding school abuse

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Arts, Books

4.2 • 671 Ratings

🗓️ 27 March 2024

⏱️ 12 minutes

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Summary

A new memoir by historian Charles Spencer, 9th Earl Spencer and brother of Princess Diana, details a difficult childhood marked by alleged physical and sexual abuse at Britain's Maidwell Hall in the 1970s. In today's episode, Spencer tells NPR's Scott Simon how childhood naivete – thinking his parents were all-knowing authorities who must've known about the school's cruelty when they sent him there – prevented him and others from speaking up about what was happening, and why writing A Very Private School felt like an important reclamation of his boyhood.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's Empire's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. It's common to ask victims of abuse who kept
0:08.4	quiet. Why didn't you say anything? Why didn't you tell anyone? And I'm not denigrating the question.
0:13.9	As a reporter, I think it needs to be asked because the answer can have different shapes,
0:18.2	different ways of seeing the world. Charles Spencer's new memoir is titled A Very Private School,
0:23.5	and it details a boyhood spent at a boarding school, allegedly full of abusive teachers.
0:28.6	And when Emperor Scott Simon asks,
0:30.8	why didn't you or any of the other boys say anything?
0:34.3	Spencer says this line.
0:35.7	He goes, quote, we had no context to our lives, which I think is
0:39.9	such a powerful way of phrasing the naivete that comes with childhood. After the break, he goes into
0:45.3	more detail as to what he means by that and gets into the specifics of what went on at the school.
0:51.4	In the U.S., national security news can feel far away from daily life. Distant wars, murky
0:57.6	conflicts, diplomacy behind closed doors on our new show, Sources and Methods. NPR reporters on the
1:03.7	ground bring you stories of real people helping you understand why distant events matter here at home.
1:10.4	Listen to sources and methods on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
1:15.7	Charles Spencer's new memoir about his five years at a posh British boys' school is often sad and shocking.
1:23.8	Presents individual teacher staff and a headmaster at Britain's Madewell Hall in the 1970s,
1:29.9	who were abusive and cruel to students in the most intimate ways.
1:35.7	Much of this discussion may be painful to hear.
1:39.1	His memoir, a very private school.
1:42.6	Charles Spencer, the ninth Earl Spencer, brother of Princess Diana, an author of several
1:47.7	histories, joins us now from London.
	...

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