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Sign up todaySad Little Men
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Learn moreBrought to you by Penguin.
The number #1 bestseller about the world that shaped Boris Johnson.
In 1975, as a child, Richard Beard was sent away from his home to sleep in a dormitory. So were David Cameron and Boris Johnson.
In those days a private boys' boarding school education was largely the same experience as it had been for generations: a training for the challenges of Empire. He didn't enjoy it. But the first and most important lesson was to not let that show.
Being separated from the people who love you is traumatic. How did that feel at the time, and what sort of adult does it mould?
This is a story about England, and a portrait of a type of boy, trained to lead, who becomes a certain type of man. As clearly as an X-ray, it reveals the make-up of those who seek power - what makes them tick, and why.
Sad Little Men addresses debates about privilege head-on; clearly and unforgettably, it shows the problem with putting a succession of men from boarding schools into positions of influence, including 10 Downing Street. Is this who we want in charge, especially at a time of crisis?
It is a passionate, tender reckoning - with one individual's past, but also with a national bad habit.
© Richard Beard 2021 (P) Penguin Audio 2021
Richard Beard is the author of Acts of the Assassins, which was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize, and most recently the memoir The Day That Went Missing, which was shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize, the James Tait Black Prize and won the PEN Ackerley Prize. In the United States the book was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
In the twenty years since his first book, he has published critically acclaimed novels and narrative non-fiction, including Becoming Drusilla, the story of how a friendship between two men was changed by a gender transition.
He has served as a judge for Canada's Giller Prize and for the BBC and Costa Short Story Awards, and is a dour opening batsman for the Authors Cricket Club.
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