Education: What Wellington Said

The Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton.

—The Duke of Wellington

"It is probably significant," writes G. F. Lamb in The Happiest Days, "that the best-known statement on English education is connected with Sport. Ask any person you meet in the street where the Battle of Waterloo was won, and if the word 'playing-fields' is not out of his mouth before the question is finished you may be sure that he is of foreign extraction. The familiar Wellington epigram has egged on thousands of prefects to beat their juniors for not playing in or supporting House cricket and...

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