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  Others in the dormitory had told you what to answer to this question. ‘Four with it on,’ you mumbled, trembling.

  * * *

  Boazer wasn’t a real word. It was Roald Dahl’s way of spelling ‘Beausieur’, which means ‘smart young man’ in French.

  * * *

  * * *

  Later Roald became a footballer (he’s in the front row on the far left) but never a Boazer.

  * * *

  This Boazer was famous for the speed of his strokes. Most of them paused between each stroke to prolong the operation, but Williamson, the great footballer, cricketer and athlete, always delivered his strokes in a series of swift back and forth movements without any pause between them at all. Four strokes would rain down upon your bottom so fast that it was all over in four seconds.

  A ritual took place in the dormitory after each beating. The victim was required to stand in the middle of the room and lower his pyjama trousers so that the damage could be inspected. Half a dozen experts would crowd round you and express their opinions in highly professional language.

  ‘What a super job.’

  ‘He’s got every single one in the same place!’

  ‘Crikey! Nobody could tell you had more than one, except for the mess!’

  ‘Boy, that Williamson’s got a terrific eye!’

  ‘Of course he’s got a terrific eye! Why d’you think he’s a Cricket Teamer?’

  ‘There’s no wet blood though! If you had had just one more he’d have got some blood out!’

  ‘Through a dressing-gown, too! It’s pretty amazing, isn’t it!’

  ‘Most Boazers couldn’t get a result like that without a dressing-gown!’

  ‘You must have tremendously thin skin! Even Williamson couldn’t have done that to ordinary skin!’

  ‘Did he use the long one or the short one?’

  ‘Hang on! Don’t pull them up yet! I’ve got to see this again!’

  And I would stand there, slightly bemused by this cool clinical approach. Once, I was still standing in the middle of the dormitory with my pyjama trousers around my knees when Williamson came through the door. ‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?’ he said, knowing very well exactly what I was doing.

  ‘N-nothing,’ I stammered. ‘N-nothing at all.’

  ‘Pull those pyjamas up and get into bed immediately!’ he ordered, but I noticed that as he turned away to go out of the door, he craned his head ever so slightly to one side to catch a glimpse of my bare bottom and his own handiwork. I was certain I detected a little glimmer of pride around the edges of his mouth before he closed the door behind him.

  * * *

  Painful Punishments

  At my last boarding school there were at least one hundred different diabolical punishments. But that was more than fifty years ago and things have changed a lot since then. We got punished for burning the prefect’s toast or if he found a speck of dust on a shelf in his study, or for not touching the rims of our straw hats as we passed a master on the road, or not taking them off if we passed a master’s wife. We got punished for leaving games clothes on the floor of the changing-room, for being late for anything at all, for talking in class, or if the brass buttons on our OTC uniforms were not shining like gold.

  * * *

  The OTC stands for the Officers’ Training Corps and is part of the British Army, providing military training to school and university students.

  * * *

  Above all, we were punished for poor work. But the master for whom one did the bad work never did the punishing. That pleasure was reserved for one’s Housemaster. A rather subtle method was emloyed by which the form-master told the Housemaster of your misdemeanour. The form-master would say in class, ‘Dahl take eighty blue’, or ‘one hundred and twenty blue’ or whatever. ‘Blue’ was a special kind of blue paper which only the Housemaster possessed, and each large page contained forty lines. You therefore had to go to your Housemaster to get it. After lunch every day, there was a queue of boys in the Housemaster’s study drawing out small fractions of their pocket-money which they had deposited with him at the beginning of term. We always paid in two and drew it out in tiny little bits at a time – thruppence, sixpence or a shilling. A boy who had been given ‘blue’ would go to the end of this queue so that when his time came he would be alone with the Housemaster. He would then be cross-examined, often beaten. Two hundred and forty blue, the maximum, was an automatic and severe thrashing. He would then have to go off and fill in all those two hundred and forty lines with an original composition of his own. Whatever other work he had to do or games he had to play, ‘blue’ had to be completed and delivered by hand to the form-master (often a mile away) before lock-up on that same day. Two-forty blue is three thousand words. That’s quite a lot to do in your spare time in one afternoon. But do it you had to, and do it you did.

  * * *

  * * *

  This letter from Roald Dahl to his mother accompanied a series of photos that he’d taken. He was very fond of photography.

  * * *

  The Headmaster

  The Headmaster, while I was at Repton, struck me as being a rather shoddy bandy-legged little fellow with a big bald head and lots of energy but not much charm. Mind you, I never did know him well because in all those months and years I was at the school, I doubt whether he addressed more than six sentences to me altogether. So perhaps it was wrong of me to form a judgement like that.

  What is so interesting about this Headmaster is that he became a famous person later on. At the end of my third year, he was suddenly appointed Bishop of Chester and off he went to live in a palace by the River Dee. I remember at the time trying to puzzle out how on earth a person could suddenly leap from being a schoolmaster to becoming a Bishop all in one jump, but there were bigger puzzles to come.

  * * *

  This Headmaster’s name was Geoffrey Fisher. He was Head of Repton School until July 1932.

  * * *

  * * *

  In 1932, while Roald Dahl was at Repton, a very important person was born 120 miles away in Sidcup. This was Quentin Blake – Whitbread Award winner, illustrator of over 300 children’s books and author and illustrator of over 30 more. But most importantly, he illustrated Roald Dahl’s books, bringing the BFG, Matilda, Willy Wonka and many more unforgettable characters to life in a totally unique and quite brilliant way.

  * * *

  From Chester, he was soon promoted again to become Bishop of London, and from there, after not all that many years, he bounced up the ladder once more to get the top job of them all, Archbishop of Canterbury! And not long after that it was he himself who had the task of crowning our present Queen in Westminster Abbey with half the world watching him on television. Well, well, well! And this was the man who used to deliver the most vicious beatings to the boys under his care!

  By now I am sure you will be wondering why I lay so much emphasis upon school beatings in these pages. The answer is that I cannot help it. All through my school life I was appalled by the fact that masters and senior boys were allowed literally to wound other boys, and sometimes quite severely. I couldn’t get over it. I never have got over it. It would, of course, be unfair to suggest that all masters were constantly beating the daylights out of all the boys in those days. They weren’t. Only a few did so, but that was quite enough to leave a lasting impression of horror upon me. It left another more physical impression upon me as well. Even today, whenever I have to sit for any length of time on a hard bench or chair, I begin to feel my heart beating along the old lines that the cane made on my bottom some fifty-five years ago.

  * * *

  This is J. T. Christie, Headmaster of Repton from 1932 to 1937.

  * * *

  There is nothing wrong with a few quick sharp tickles on the rump. They probably do a naughty boy a lot of good. But this Headmaster we were talking about wasn’t just tickling you when he took out his cane to deliver a flogging. He never flogged me, thank goodness, but