Word: borstal
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...around the world. The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, scheduled for release in the U.S. this autumn, is an equally good film, and Courtenay's performance has all the detailed excellence of Finney's. He plays Colin Smith 993, an inmate at Her Majesty's Borstal prison at Ruxton Towers. The place is a stately old home landscaped with barbed wire (Sillitoe's way of saying "this sceptered isle"). Smith, son of a factory worker, is the natural enemy of the Establishment. He is a convicted burglar who feels no guilt, only odium...
...Locked in a Lavatory. Alfie's vivid sense of injustice dates back to childhood, when his father died after ten strokes of the cat-o'-nine-tails for armed robbery. Lodged in a children's home, he made his first break at seven. He escaped a Borstal institution for delinquents in his teens, and during World War II learned the art of camouflage as an army deserter. His first headline break came after his conviction for the safe job (Scotland Yard has yet to trace $90,000 worth of stolen jewelry). After Alfie slipped through locked doors...
...long title story, the battle lines are swiftly drawn. Smith, the 17-year-old narrator, is serving a stretch in a Borstal Institution for juvenile delinquents (his offense: stealing ?150 from a bakery). Encouraged by the hearty, sports-loving warden to train for an All-England crosscountry race of Borstal inmates, Smith lets down his high-minded sponsor by deliberately quitting in the stretch. Why? Because Smith knows "it's war between me and them," and has no intention of giving aid and comfort to the enemy...
...Borstal Boy, by Brendan Behan. The old-reform-school tie flashily worn by an unreformed and gifted Irish writer...
...Borstal Boy, by Brendan Behan. The old-reform-school tie flashily worn by an unreformed and gifted Irish writer...