Roy Straitley is the Classics Master, and he epitomises everything that is old school. She’s the first woman in the School’s History to be Head and she is determined to modernise and make the required changes to the failing school and its curriculum. As we begin the book, Rebecca Buckfast, nee Becky Price, has taken over as Headmistress of St Oswalds Grammar and has already made it co-educational. You can read A Narrow Door as a stand-alone, but in fact it is the third book in a series which is set in St Oswald’s Grammar School for Boys. So I was more than intrigued when one of the three schools featured in Joanne Harris’s excellent A Narrow Door is King Henry’s Grammar School, though this one is for boys. It was called Prince Henry’s Grammar School and when I went, selective schooling was still in play. I attended a grammar school in Yorkshire for a short time. She’ll bury the past so deep it will evade even her own memory, just like she has done before. And with it, the remains of a body are discovered.īut Rebecca is here to make her mark. As the new regime takes on the old guard, the ground shifts. Barely forty, she is just starting to reap the harvest of her ambition. Rebecca Buckfast has spilled blood to reach this position. For the first time in its history, a headmistress is in power, the gates opening to girls. It’s an incendiary moment for St Oswald’s school. Now I’m in charge, the gates are my gates. My thanks to Orion and Tracy Fenton for an advance copy for review
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |