In Dark Corners

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In Dark Corners: Ashdown House

Ashdown House

BBC Radio 4 - In Dark Corners, Ashdown House

Alex Renton presents a series about class, power and privilege in Britain's elite schools.

What will be uncovered when a light is shone in the dark corners of Britain's most elite boarding schools? Alex Renton presents a story of class, power and privilege.

Alex Renton attended three traditional private schools. When he was eight he left home and boarded at Ashdown House, a prep school in East Sussex; a feeder school to Eton College.

Within weeks of his arrival he was sexually abused by a teacher. The teacher was never charged or even sacked. He died in 2011, a free man. 

The assault, compounded by the physical and emotional abuse so often a feature of boarding school life, has stayed with Alex. And like a great number of the million Britons alive today who attended these institutions, he spent the subsequent years trying to forget what had happened to him there. 

Then, in 2014, Alex finally decided he had to face his demons. He wrote a book, Stiff Upper Lip, about public schools and about the experiences he and others had within them. That’s when the emails and letters started pouring in. Former pupils, men and women, from all around the country, shared with him their stories of sexual and physical abuse. The scale was breathtaking. 

Now, years later, Alex Renton has unfinished business with Britain’s elite schooling system.

In the first episode of a three part series, Alex returns to Ashdown House, where some of Britain's most powerful figures, including Boris Johnson and the Queen's nephew David Linley, were educated. 

From Sussex to South Africa, Alex tells the story of how a group of men, all subjected to horrendous sexual abuse, are still fighting to bring their abusers to justice. 


Producer: Caitlin Smith
Additional Research: Claire Harris 
Reporting in South Africa: Nceba Ezra Singapi 
Sound Design: Jon Nicholls
Editors: Gail Champion and Heather Kane-Darling

Photo: Alex at eight years old

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What will be uncovered when a light is shone in the dark corners of Britain's most elite boarding school? Alex Renton presents a story of class, power and privilege.

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