Dragon Days: The Dragon School, Oxford, 1949-1955

This is the central panel of a ‘Dragon Triptych’. It describes life at an English preparatory boarding school, the Dragon School, Oxford, between 1949 and 1955. Based on hundreds of letters written from the school by three boys, and using other letters by their parents, school reports, photographs and school magazines, it examines the school through the eyes of its pupils. It is a study of all aspects of boarding school life, that extraordinary semi-closed world of work and play which shapes children at such an impressionable age. It explores, in the context of life at one of the most important English preparatory schools at the time, some of the effects of the rapidly changing post-war years, the training in self-confidence, the end of Empire, unusual educational approaches, and the creation of English identity. It is complemented by accounts of home life in Alan Macfarlane’s Dorset Days and Jamie Bruce Lockhart’s Different Days.