Anthony Horowitz: ‘As I’ve got older, I’ve come to question the value of public schools’

It’s rather sad that two of Rugby’s best-known old boys since the war are Salman Rushdie – who famously hated the place with a vengeance – and me, and I haven’t been there for years. I went back just once, about 20 years ago, to give a talk.

When I got there I felt incredibly uncomfortable: nothing reminds you of your age more than visiting the school where once you were young, and I’m not going back again. 

Rugby had been lined up for me because someone in my father’s chambers suggested it. There had been no discussion about my going there, and because of the time in which I was born and the parents I was born to, I had no understanding of how or why anything happened, which is rather sad. It still bothers me that I made no decisions for myself until I was quite old, and I wish my parents were alive so that I could ask them some of the questions thinking about my school days has brought up.

One of the worst things about the school is its location. From our home in Stanmore we made that grim journey up the M1 to Rugby, looking out at the endless, flat Midlands landscape until these huge smokestacks and pylons came into view, and you knew you were getting close.

And when I got there I remember an unruly maelstrom of boys, loud noises, cases, trunks and tuck boxes being dragged along the ground, strange smells and tiny studies. There were initiations: some by the boys – one ordeal entailed being forced to run down the corridor and then getting thrown into a laundry basket – and some by the teachers, who were generally less violent than the boys.

At the beginning I had to learn the sink-or-swim mentality of a public school like Rugby, with its particular traditions. I’d already been a boarder for five years so I wasn’t new to the idea of being in a boarding school, although the time I’d had at my prep school Orley Farm had left me dysfunctional in many ways. 

I was a damaged 13-year-old and quite depressive; I was talking and writing about death as being far better than getting old. (I believe that if the 13-year-old me could see this 67-year-old talking to you he would simply hurl himself under the nearest bus.) Also I was slow in making friends and so inclined to be lonely; I was overweight, and very poor at sports – not a very good combination. If you’re going to be a success at public school you need to be either clever or athletic, and I was neither. 

An important part of being in a public school is the house you are assigned. I was in School Field which was considered to be a creative house, known for its drama and music, and very nicely positioned on the Close where William Webb Ellis had invented the game of rugby; it also had a very smiley, jovial housemaster called Tom Buckney, known as Bodger, sadly now deceased.

Thing is, I knew very early on that sciences weren’t for me; maths and economics and so on were no good. I knew beyond certainty I was going to be a writer: it was the only thing I could do, and I was convinced I was going to be successful, special, different. That sounds arrogant but it wasn’t something I boasted about; I kept it quiet. 

One of the good things about Rugby was that they found my skill and encouraged it – to an extent they burnished and stoked it. There were three wonderful teachers: Robin Alden taught English language; Nigel Brown, who was called the fourth Goodie, because the rumour was he had applied to be one of the Goodies on television but been turned down; and Jeffrey Helliwell, who taught literature and encouraged me to stretch myself in my reading. He made me read The Go-Between by LP Hartley, which is an extraordinarily powerful book. I wrote an essay about it, and won a prize, and I can still remember the pleasure I took in writing that essay and the realisation I could write well.

I remember doing what was called Social Services – it was either that or the Corps, and I wasn’t very good at playing soldiers – and having to visit indescribably cranky ladies in Rugby on a Thursday afternoon, and make tea for them and then clean their houses. Sunday afternoons seemed interminable, although I rather liked the emptiness of them.

The school has its charms, particularly if you like Victorian architecture: the gothic chapel, for example, is beautiful. But the town of Rugby is remarkably ugly. There was only one upmarket restaurant, which wasn’t that good anyway, where you went with your parents when they came up for one of those cripplingly embarrassing Sunday lunches where you ran out of anything to talk about after five minutes.

Holidays were exciting, all the cases coming out and the frenetic activity of everybody about to go away, and then arrangements to see other boys – that was the best thing, much nicer than going back to my own home. There was this boy called Nicholas Williams who had a wonderful family and I went to stay with them a couple of times.  

Denys Blakeway was the boy I most admired: he was the cleverest boy in the school – I liked to think of myself as the second cleverest boy – although we were both interviewed for Cambridge on the same day, and we were both turned down on the same day. 

One of the happiest memories of my life was a holiday in Turkey with Denys and his family. His father was the consul general in Istanbul, a very stern, rather scary man. He insisted I stop reading everything I had brought with me and start reading Great Expectations. That was the beginning of a love affair with Dickens, which has stayed with me to this day. 

I came out of Rugby half-formed, that’s the truth of it. Rugby helped find the writer in me but in terms of being a full human being... well, I wasn’t anywhere near it. I knew nothing about life and I needed to come to some understanding of the world because my horizons were so very narrow. That only happened when I took a gap year and went to Australia and became a jackaroo on this huge cattle station. It was hard physical work but I needed to shake myself up.

When my son turned 10, I thought he might go to Rugby, and my wife and I took him up to see the school. He adored the place; he thought it was fantastic. But afterwards we went into the town looking for a coffee, and I saw my wife’s face fall and fall again traipsing through this unattractive town, and I knew what she was going to say by the time we found our coffee. We sent him – and his brother – to Marlborough.

As I’ve got older I’ve come to question the value of public schools generally, partly because of that last out-take from Eton who have so ruined our lives with their inbuilt arrogance and entitlement. And although I sent my children to public schools I hope they won’t do the same for theirs. 

At the same time I can’t help but think about Rugby without a sense of nostalgia and fondness. Rugby improved me, I’ll say that for it; it gave me the space to develop the better sides of my character. And I shall never forget the last day of the last term, those cases closing, tuck boxes being dragged across the floor. There was a finality about it. We had all been jammed together for five of the most formative years of our life and then it just ended and we went our separate ways and never saw each other again.

Anthony Horowitz’s latest book is ‘The Twist of a Knife’ (Penguin)

Do you think there is value in public schools? Would you send your children to public school? Please let us know in the comments below.