Word: etonian
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Eton is famous for its blue bloods and for the statesmen and men of letters it has turned out. The students there acquire an elegance and gloss. Sue Townsend, author of the satirical The Queen and I and no monarchist, says, "William has that Etonian look already. The boys are burnished; they are like angels, you know, and they float around the world." It is likely that during his five years there, Wills won't have too much time to think about his battling parents. His day is a strict drill. Up at 8, compulsory chapel after breakfast, classes...
...enters the enemy's lair, all the master's usual, unequaled scenes are on display: the minuet between expert interrogator and expert evader; the battles in London between men of principle and Old Etonian Iagos; the appearance of a beautiful woman who offers a way out of the spy's maze of mirrors. Without raising a sweat, Le Carre propels us from Cairo penthouses to Cornwall pubs, from Quebecois mining towns to secret islands in the Bahamas, from Miami to London to Panama, all of them evoked with an insider's authority...
...have passed since Henry VI dreamed up a school just down the road from Windsor Castle to accommodate "25 poor and indigent scholars." And last week's St. Andrew's Day (Nov. 30), the final great red-letter day of the school's anniversary year, was celebrated in typically Etonian style, with a staging of the annual Wall Game, a notorious blood sport in which 20 savage nobles flail and scramble in the mud in what is fittingly known as a "bully." Punching is forbidden, but applying "steady pressure" with one's fist upon a face is warmly encouraged...
...Rushdie. Boys put on plays by Ken Kesey and Lope de Vega, flock to a newly formed Green Society, gather to discuss the biological causes of altruism. They also enjoy unusual access to the world: in the midst of Conservative Party turmoil, Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd, a devoted Old Etonian remembered for his play along the Wall, was scheduled to come down to the school to address its political society. In some ways, in fact, there is almost an embarrassment of extracurricular riches. "The school needs to be more sympathetic to the personal psychology of adolescent boys, and give them...
...self-assurance that makes the school's enemies see red. It is not that the best-qualified students go to Eton, they charge, but that going to Eton is the best qualification for success: as recently as 1960, fully one-fifth of all Conservative Members of Parliament were Old Etonians (imagine 60 Republican Congressmen coming from a single high school). The school's defenders retaliate by pointing out that its distinctive features -- every boy has a room of his own and attends regular tutorials, known as Private Business -- ensure that it will continue to produce as many renegades as rulers...