• Stiff Upper Lip

  • Secrets, Crimes and the Schooling of a Ruling Class
  • By: Alex Renton
  • Narrated by: David Thorpe
  • Length: 11 hrs and 55 mins
  • 4.6 out of 5 stars (7 ratings)

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Stiff Upper Lip  By  cover art

Stiff Upper Lip

By: Alex Renton
Narrated by: David Thorpe
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Publisher's summary

This is the story of generations of parents, Britain's richest and grandest, who believed that being miserable at school was necessary to make a good and successful citizen. Childish suffering was a price they accepted for the preservation of their class and their entitlement. The children who were moulded by this misery and abuse went on - as they still do - to run Britain's public institutions and private companies.

Confronting the truth of his own schooldays and the crimes he witnessed, Alex Renton has revealed a much bigger story. It is of a profound malaise in the British elite, shown up by tolerance of the abuse of its own children that amounts to collusion. This culture and its traditions, and the hypocrisy, cronyism and conspiracy that underpin them, are key to any explanation of the scandals over sexual abuse, violence and cover-up in child care institutions that are now shocking the nation. As Renton shows, complicity in this is the bleak secret at the heart of today's British elite.

Read by David Thorpe.

©2017 Alex Renton (P)2017 Orion Publishing Group

What listeners say about Stiff Upper Lip

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Terrifying book that everyone should read

I may have lived in some sort of innocent reality. I have never realised the scale and reach of sexual harassment of children in our society. Extremely personal but also well researched book that I hope will have a follow up discussing the current situation in international boarding schools.

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Gruesome

Amazingly candid, terrifyingly gruesome, difficult to fathom and understand why this has been going on for so long without anyone interfering...boarder survivor

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