Word: borstal
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...BORSTAL BOY (372 pp.)-Brendan Behan-Knopf...
...during his writing bouts. Not that it is easy to stick to work, now that the vagabond liver has money and fame. Brendan has started a novel about Dublin, but, he says, "I can't get on with it with all this blanking success." Meanwhile, since his Borstal Boy was banned as "obscene" by the Irish government, he strides about bellowing (to the tune of MacNamara's Band...
When the boys first arrived at camp, both groups were ill at ease. "I thought these Oxford students," said one Borstal boy, "would all be poshy types. And I dare say they thought we'd all come in carrying choppers [razors] and machine guns." As the days passed, suspicion melted away. From the moment the camp's cooks of the day lit the stove to fry the breakfast eggs, the two groups worked and played together, soon developed the camaraderie of foxhole cronies. They toured nearby castles and monasteries, gradually began to unburden themselves. Says one Oxonian: "When...
...Borstal boys showed a surprising curiosity about university life, an equally surprising willingness to talk about their troubles. At nightly bull sessions, the Oxonians managed to offer sympathy and advice without seeming to patronize. "We can talk to them," said one Borstal boy, "like they was our own." Says an Oxonian: "If we can give them some inkling of what the rest of the world is like, we will have done...
...last week not only the lady magistrate but most everyone else in town had changed their minds about Jory's experiment. Living as equals with equal freedom, the Borstal boys got along so well with their Oxford contemporaries that not a single one tried to "scarper" (run away). The villagers even took them on in cricket matches and invited them to tea. Among their hosts was the objecting lady magistrate herself, who last week took a bunch of the boys off on a sightseeing tour of some local Roman ruins. Concluded Albert Clarke, a retired police superintendent and unofficial...