This text presents a host of recollections - funny, sad, angry, absurd, sometimes nostalgic of the formative, impressionable years at prep school. Randolph Churchill subdues the bullies with military precision. Rex Harrison stars for the first time, as Thisbe, and Archibald Leach (later Cary Grant) adopts - to hide a broken tooth - the tight-lipped smile that will later be famous. Noel Coward discovers the "almost frightening healthy mindedness" of "The Magnet" and "The Gem", Cyril Conolly describes an unexpected reaction to Cecil Beaton's singing, Roald Dahl reveals what Matron did with the toothpaste, and Peregrine Worsthorne discovers an unexpected advantage to having been at prep school - that life afterwards "seems one glorious holiday by comparison".