SCHOOLDAYS AT RUGBY

Southland Times, Issue 23332, 16 October 1937, Page 19

SCHOOLDAYS AT RUGBY

A MODERN TOM BROWN’S SCHOOLDAYS. By Michael Scott. George G. Harrap and Co., London. Price 7/6. The title of this book raises expectations rather too high. “Tom Brown’s Schooldays” was set at Rugby, but it had a universal quality which allowed it to appeal to school boys and fathers who had never set foot within the precincts of an English public school. This modern version is simply a view of Rugby in recent years. There is no story in the accepted usage of the word, and the detail, although sometimes interesting and amusing, does not go very far. “Tom Brown” and his companions are shadowy persons. Their slangy conversations impart a certain vitality, and for old boys of Rugby there will be interest in the portraits of the masters. But boys and masters live and move in a twilight world which seems to have been sealed away from contact with the bigger world outside. A public school is undoubtedly a sphere of its own, but it is hard to believe that boys are still unvisited by the rumours and influences of the contemporary scene. Something of the same effect is to be traced in the writing, which —apart from the schoolboy dialogue—is curiously old-fash-ioned. Major Brown drives his boy to school in a high-powered motor-car; but he seems to come from a remote and static province of the past. _ And the feeling persists that this is the shadowy place to which Tom is destined when schooldays are over. Only

once does he really come to life, and that is when he breaks a high note in the course of “Lambsinging,” and leads the laughter himself. This book is not likely to take its place among the school-boy classics.