Reviews with content warning for Suicide - Sad Little Men: Private Schools and the Ruin of England

Reviews tagging 'Suicide'

Sad Little Men: Private Schools and the Ruin of England by Richard Beard

3 reviews

pavonini's review against another edition

informative reflective sad

4.0

My first book on the public school system in the UK, so for me it was very eye-opening. Approached with a decent balance of "this is what happened to me" vs "these are the effects on society", managing to walk that line and not be too self-centred though based on his own experiences. Those poor children.

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elerireads's review against another edition

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emotional informative reflective sad slow-paced

2.0

I have mixed feelings about this book. I think the point it's making is an excellent and important one, but I didn't really get on with the style and structure of the book. In many ways I think it's valuable to have a book like this written by someone who actually went to one of these schools, and has spent many years thinking about and coming to terms with its impact on his psyche. No outsider could possibly have that level of insight. However, it wasn't clear to me what he was actually trying to achieve with this book - it's part memoir, part journalistic style interviewing and recounting recent visits back, and part theoretical essay. Except there was a fair amount of ambiguity in the way the three were mixed up and it all just felt like a long list of random points with whichever of the three he could find to back it up: a story from his own childhood, something someone said to him or a news article he could find, or referring to one of only 5 or 6 sources that he kept coming back to again and again. I'm sorry but there must be more sources on the subject than Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism, one documentary and the Molesworth books. There were also quite a few chapters which were so rambly that I couldn't actually figure out what the overall point was and had to go back to check the helpfully explanatory chapter titles. I just think this could have been a much more powerful book if more thought had been put into its structure.

I know this had a very specific focus on public boarding schools but I really think it could have benefited from some kind of contrast with other types of schools. What about non-boarding private schools? What about grammar schools? A discussion of how these schools fit into the wider picture of the UK education system was sorely lacking, especially as some of the problems he was identifying are present in many other educational settings. Calling for the abolition of public boarding schools without any kind of acknowledgment that the alternatives aren't all sunshine and daisies is very short-sighted. (I feel I should just clarify here that I do of course agree wholeheartedly with his position)

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sakisreads's review against another edition

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dark sad tense slow-paced

3.0

This was a book I saw in Waterstones that I knew I HAD to read! I was slightly disappointed; it felt like Beard was simply moaning a lot of the time. But it did have moments where I felt stunned because there were some shocking insights into boarding school, ones that I could appreciate having been to one myself! I liked his candour too, so maybe I’m being a bit harsh in my critique… But still 🫠

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