C. S. Lewis

England in 1913, where everyone knows their place. Specifically, Malvern College in Worcestershire, established in 1865 and at this time only admitting boys. Dominating the sprawling 250-acre school grounds is the main building, with three wings, including a central gatehouse, partly enclosing a central quadrangle. The main building mostly consists of classrooms. As well as a separate chapel, there are also nine separate boarding houses, each with dormitories, studies, and refectories. The oldest boys have their own bedrooms. Each house also has a prep room for younger boys to work in, and the prefects share a library and a common room. Toilet and washing facilities are also shared. Homosexuality is rife, and is by far the most popular topic of conversation, although younger boys who act as catamites are usually neither paid nor coerced into doing so. Corporal punishment of younger boys by older ones is frequent and routine, often for perceived insolence that is actually imagined. So-called "Bloods" are older boys considered to be of higher rank by their athletic and social status, who are usually also appointed prefects by the Masters. The youngest boys are required to act as servants for the oldest - the older boys can assign any chore or errand to any younger boy that they choose. Boys old enough to have outgrown this duty set their sights on becoming Bloods themselves, thus have no interest in rebelling against the system. For new boys, the workload of these duties, academic work, and compulsory sport, is enough to be overwhelming. Despite this, they are required to maintain a positive demeanour at all times; even briefly appearing miserable is an offence liable to punishment. As a scholarship boy, Lewis' academic workload is even heavier. For all boys, enthusiasm for House and school sporting events has to be exaggerated where it exists, and simulated where it does not. At cricket matches minor Bloods patrol the crowd of spectators to detect and punish any “slackness” in the applause. The rivalry in sport is hellishly severe. The school library is the one place where the younger boys are free from being ordered to do chores for older boys, but to reach it they must avoid being forced into participating or spectating in sports, or being caught by an older boy who might give them enough chores to last the whole afternoon. The entire system is designed to knock any "cheek" or defiance out of the younger boys, and force them to submit completely to the older ones. The result is a community absorbed by competitiveness, full of snobbery and flunkeyism, where the prefects and bloods are privileged and arrogant, and the younger boys fawning and pathetic.

The son of a solicitor and a Mathematics graduate, born in Belfast, Clive Staples Lewis (C.S. Lewis) previously boarded at Cherbourg House preparatory school in Malvern, where he became an atheist, read widely, and developed an interest in Norse mythology and the occult. He had already endured primitive conditions, including frequent corporal punishment, at previous schools. On arriving at Malvern College he is eager to please, and overawed by the manliness, sporting prowess and effortless authority of the so-called "Bloods". From his older brother, he has some understanding of the traditions of the school, including younger boys acting as catamites for older ones, but he is ill-prepared for the volume of constraints on his time, or for the minutiae of learning where he must be, and what he should be doing, at each moment of the day. Lewis is also unable to change the natural expression on his face, which older boys automatically assume is a deliberate look of insolence, that "needs a smack".