A New Kind of Elite

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But maybe times are changing; maybe Britain is less bothered by the old engines of class division than it once was. (And maybe ordinary Britons were never as bothered by signs of privilege as the chattering classes.) When all was said and done, Cameron did win the Tory leadership. Polls rate him as more popular than Tony Blair or Brown — and his speaking style has a lot more street cred than Brown's. Blair himself is the product of an Edinburgh school, Fettes, that is often called the Scottish Eton. A lot of institutions that used to symbolize and perpetuate inequality in Britain seem to have lost their toxic punch; the royal family, for example, has never been more popular. What about Eton? What lessons is it imparting today, to what kind of boy? Is it manufacturing smug toffs, or are its students being equipped to make an honest living in a more classless, complex world?

A visitor to the school is struck by Eton's pungent combination of beauty and history that makes it seem, though it's in the middle of a small town, a world apart. There really are endless green fields, a soaring 15th century chapel, rooms where centuries of schoolboys have carved their names and a courtyard lined with plaques commemorating thousands of Old Etonians killed in service to their country. The physical setting complements other kinds of apartness the school fosters. Not just the uniform of white tie and black tailcoat, vest and pin-striped trousers, but a collection of customs and slang whose mastery confers membership in the brotherhood. Teachers are "beaks," the three school terms are called "halves," "wet bobs" are rowers, "tugs" are the 70 especially bright King's Scholars, who live together in a house called "College" on reduced fees, as stipulated by the school's founder, Henry VI.

Of course this breeds insularity and exclusivity; the upside is intensity. Classes are small, teaching is often passionate, the boys work hard — 97 out of a class of 263 were offered places at Oxford or Cambridge last year, and 110 are studying Chinese. By custom, to show the respect they want the boys to give it, teachers must mark written work within 24 hours. They're given a lot of latitude on how to teach and are well paid — two-thirds earn over $72,000, plus housing — but they're also expected to coach athletic teams and help with extracurricular activities. French and Spanish teacher Tim Beard says, "Your priority all day long is working to make things easier and better for the boys." Percy Harrison, head of science, says: "I see my family at breakfast and at dinner. I'm often working to 10 or 11 at night; and so is everyone." The admissions director, William Rees, talks of a "culture of mutual high expectations between masters and boys."

Because it's a seven-day-a-week boarding school, the high expectations extend beyond the classroom. Richard Mason, a South African novelist who published his first book, The Drowning People, three years after leaving Eton in 1996, says that as a student he got to act in several plays "in a 400-seat theater. They were quite serious productions." Classmates composed music that was performed by the school's symphony orchestra, in a hall that is attached to a professional-quality recording studio. "You can try your hand at things and see approximately what it would be like in real life, which is quite amazing. I was conscious that an enormous proportion of my parents' income went to keeping me in this place and how privileged I was to be there. My attitude was, really throw yourself into it and benefit from it," says Mason. Tom, a fourth-year student, says the school emphasizes excellence so much that "it's quite harsh on people who don't have a talent or field they excel in; it's pretty Darwinistic in that sense. If you don't fit in, that's the guy who will say, 'I'll be the druggie.'" But discipline problems and rebels are not something that particularly surprise or worry Tony Little, the headmaster. The ones he finds vexing are the "soggy" boys who drift without engaging. They're given plenty of chances to find something that gets their juices flowing. More than 200 visitors came to speak last year at events organized by the students. "It feels quite natural for a 17-year-old to invite the Japanese ambassador to speak, and for him to say yes," says Little. (That happened in May.)

One parent says what she likes best about Eton is that her son is "on his own, but not alone." There are no enforced study periods. Boys are expected to manage their own busy lives. They live in houses with about 50 others, each with his own bedroom, overseen by a senior teacher in residence, perhaps with his own family; this housemaster, whose standard term is 13 years, keeps a close eye on his charges. The reports he writes to a boy's parents are often gems of shrewd character dissection. The ethos is intimate, reinforced by a compulsory daily meeting of all teachers, who assemble in their gowns to hear a few announcements and then rapidly transact business about individual boys. "You really get to know your teachers and can be very matey with them," says Tom, the fourth-year student. "On a Saturday evening you can pop up to a teacher's house, have a glass of wine and a chat." Little says, "There's a net there trying to influence boys to make the right decisions, but it's not intrusive. The whole thing has to be built around human relations and communication; you protect that and build outward."

A paradoxical result of all this careful human cultivation is that for many, Eton becomes hard to outgrow: a more intense experience, at a more formative time, than anything that comes after. Nick Fraser, an accomplished documentary filmmaker, has just published The Importance of Being Eton, Inside the World's Most Powerful School, a memoir-cum-essay that probes Eton's lifelong influence. He speaks of classmates who marry each other's sisters in order to remain in a kind of Eton club, of their difficulties in relating to exotic creatures like women and the less privileged, and quotes writer John Le Carré, who taught at the school in the 1950s: "The boys were adult, funny, a little removed from life, even as they evolved effortlessly into the shrewdest operators. They communicated with each other in code. Most of all, I felt, they really knew how to be with each other, and that was the real Eton thing." Some boys now attending are the seventh unbroken generation of their family's male line; 40% of this year's intake have an Old Etonian father, uncle or grandfather. The most searing moment in Fraser's book is a testament to the underside of the intense human relationships the school can foster: a sinister, semi-erotic punishment for a minor infraction inflicted by the then headmaster, Anthony Chenevix-Trench, who, alone in his study at night, tipsy and sobbing, slapped Fraser's bare bottom with his hand 10 times.