Literary fiction · Adult · Forthcoming
Wychwood
The school motto was Strength in Silence. This is what the silence cost.
About the book
In September 1990, ten-year-old Sebastian Hollis is sent to Wychwood College, an English boarding school whose motto is Fortitudo in Silentio: strength in silence. Told decades later by the man he became, this is the story of what happened to him there, what the adults around him did and did not see, and the friendship that helped him survive.
Sebastian arrives at Wychwood with a Swiss Army knife from his grandfather, a paper crane from a friend who has moved away, and a head full of space colonies. He finds a best friend in William Ashford, kind teachers and cruel boys, and a young English master who seems to see something special in him. Narrated by Sebastian as an adult, who can only approach the boy he was one step at a time, Wychwood follows the grooming and abuse of a child without ever showing the abuse itself, looking instead at what a child does with his attention to get through it. It is also a book about fencing and cross-country runs, midnight feasts and summers on a Yorkshire farm, and the small number of adults who did the right thing. Unflinching and deeply humane, it asks what it takes for a child to be believed.
The world of Wychwood
Wychwood College
An English boarding school in 1990, whose motto is Fortitudo in Silentio: strength in silence.
Key themes
- Institutional silence
- How a school, a motto and a culture of not asking allowed harm to continue.
- Friendship and solidarity
- The bond between two boys that holds when nothing else does.
- Being believed
- The adults who listened, and what it meant when they did.
- The long aftermath
- Memory, testimony and the slow work of recovery.
