[imagesource:wikimediacommons]

Princess Diana’s younger brother Charles Spencer has written a number of books already, but this time, the British author-journalist is delving into his own personal hell: boarding school.

While the author often writes historical tomes, either about British royals or his own family’s history, this time he’s making things quite personal. It has been announced that Charles has been working on a book about his childhood years at the Maidwell Hall boarding school and the painful lessons he endured there.

The book, being published in March next year with Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, is called A Very Private School: A Memoir and is described as a “clear-eyed, firsthand account of a ‘culture of cruelty’.”

“In this poignant memoir, Charles Spencer recounts the trauma of being sent away from home at age eight to attend boarding school,” the caption states, in a joint post the 9th Earl Spencer shared with his publisher, Gallery Books.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Gallery Books Group (@gallerybooks)

Besides providing insights about the antiquated boarding system, exploring the long-lasting impact of his experiences, and presenting a candid reckoning with his past and reclamation of his childhood, Charles will also include anecdotes about his “happy life at home” during that time.

“I’m writing this book before my memories of half a century ago tip over into that chasm of forgetfulness that shadows old age,” he said. “Beyond my own experiences, I wanted to look at what, really, was going on in this strangely secretive place.”

Fortune notes that Maidwell is a boarding and day school for boys and girls, ages 4 to 13. A welcome note on the website from Headmaster Anthony Rendall describes it as a “warm, welcoming vibrant prep school set in the beautiful English countryside”. That’s what they like to tell you at least.

Cue major flashbacks to season two of The Crown, when King Charles (then Prince Charles) gets sent to boarding school at his father’s behest. Granted, those aspects of that storyline may not have been entirely historically accurate, so Spencer is setting the record straight, ready to give his firsthand account in a memoir that is sure to grab headlines.

You can pre-order your copy of A Very Private School here.

[source:fortune]