I've Been Throttled By My Old School Tie

By Author: allan
Total Articles: 366
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I was at Eton between 1961 to 1965（http://www.itscopied.com/）, getting in by the skin of my teeth, and leaving the school having left less mark upon it than any boy before or since. As Channel 4 tonight examines the British upper class, I have to say I greatly enjoyed my time at Eton and certainly benefited from its unique2 resources, but I was an unremarkable3 Etonian in every sense of the word.It was strange, therefore, when I went to Lancaster University, to discover that a mark had certainly been left on me. Many students knew I was "that old Etonian", and this excited very distinct4 reactions. Some were genuinely5 curious about what it had been like at "Britain's premier public school". But for many, it was as if I carried the mark of Cain6. I ran into a hail7 of inverted8 snobbery.People made assumptions: I was rich, snobbish, aristocratic10, right wing and good for a kicking (whereas, in reality, I was middle class, politically vague11, pretty much took people as they came and failed to live on my grant like everybody else).In retrospect, I think it says something odd about British attitudes to class. Eton ...
... has become a meta-phor for the whole class system, which on the one hand we decry13 and on the other aspire14 to. Old Etonian is shorthand15 for position, privilege16, background, wealth and power. It is not true, of course. It is simply shorthand that your parents have been able to pay the fees.After some dithering17 following university, I went into advertising. Alerted by my Lancaster experiences, I was careful about making my Eton provenance18 widely known, yet it obviously had a certain cachet19. Egalitarian20 as advertising was, there was still a place for good, old-fashioned class consciousness, not to say stereotyping. I was seen as a bit of a nob21.Other well-known public schools—Winchester, Harrow, Rugby — have not entered general public consciousness in quite the same way or engendered the same... I wouldn't call it hostility exactly. Sensitivity is a better word. It is remarkable how many times the description of "old Etonian" appears in news-papers attached to some name or other, all too frequently in circumstances that suggest a certain hubris23: "old Etonian Simon Mannj"; "old Etonian Jonathan Aitken"; "old Etonian James Goldsmith".It is as if being an old Etonian is the most distinc-tive24 thing about them in a way that being an oldHarrovian, Wykehamist or Rugbeian is not. Coming from these schools is not a matter of public interest, while having been to Eton is. Eton has become a brand, like Coca-Cola or Microsoft, but it carries with it not so much its own values, but the values that the world ascribes25 to it.Old Etonian Cyril Connolly wrote a whole book, Enemies of Promise, about just how damaging going to the school can be. His premise was that such is the distinction of achievements there (assuming you achieved anything; unfounded in my own case) that you are ruined for life because nothing compares with the heady glories of Eton success.Tosh27, of course. Nevertheless, in the eyes of the world, having been to Eton may well be the most interesting thing about you. I would not be writing this article if I was not an old Etonian. Mind you, it's not nearly so interesting as the fact that I also went to Roedean. But that's another story..（http://www.watchescat.com/）