A Time of Gifts

Reading the travel classic A Time of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor, in which he sets out to walk from Rotterdam to Constantinople in 1933. The passage below struck me, as he reminisced about the values of his public school - King's School Canterbury. Maybe the question needs to be asked in this troubled England, what, if anything, has changed since his musings?

"'It goes without saying that in a small, tradition-haunted public school of such improbable antiquity - founded a few decades after Justinian closed the pagan academy at Athens - the atmosphere was likely to be conservative, and it was; but it was conservatism of an inexplicit kind, unaggressive because it was unchallenged - at least, at the age of sixteen and a half it was, which is when I vanished for the scene; but deep in the bloodstream nevertheless . . . 

Socialism sounded grey and without charm and Labour MPs conjured up visions of steel-rimmed spectacles, homespun cloth, cocoa and seed-cake and long killjoy faces bent on dismantling - what? Here an odd medley of targets would be bandied across fifth-form studies: What indeed? Why, the Empire for a start! The Fleet! The Army! Established religion - 'except Methodist chapels;' Gibraltar, the Lords, judges' wigs, kilts, bearskins, public schools ('No, steady on!'), Latin and Greek, Oxford and Cambridge - 'the Boat race too, most likely'; 'county cricket for a cert' - steeplechasing, shooting, fox-hunting, flat-racing, the Derby, betting, country-life, farming - ('I'd bet they'd plough up everything for swedes and beetroots if they got the chance!') What about London? Why, the Palladium and the Aldwych would be turned into lecture halls or bloody temperance canteens . . . Talk would languish and a pensive gloom descend. Then someone might say: 'It's a pity something can't be done about those poor chaps on the dole'; and the gloom would deepen; then: 'It's rotten luck on all those miners.' Awkward silence would prolong itself while these liberal thoughts fluttered overhead. Then somebody might tactfully put Rhapsody in Blue or Ain't Misbehavin' on the gramophone steer the talk into happier channels . . . "