Why is eton called a public school

Ian Fleming took the traditional route to the school — he was the son of an old Etonian army major — but failed to perform academically and was removed from the school by his mother before he could fail to graduate. He did at least kick off his writing career at Eton, publishing his first story in the school magazine The Wyvern.

Fleming isn't the only writer to have a complicated relationship with the school. George Orwell, who attended on a scholarship and whose old school tie didn't quite fit such a man of the people, later disdained Eton, saying that although he was "relatively happy" at the school, he "did no work there and learned very little".

In his essay The Lion and the Unicorn, he wrote that "probably the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton, but the opening battles of all subsequent wars have been lost there. One of the dominant facts in English life during the past three-quarters of a century has been the decay of ability in the ruling class. Even for writers who didn't attend Eton, it has provided inspiration. The good pupils are often brilliant […] and take you to the limits of your knowledge.

The worst pupils," he added, "provide a unique insight into the criminal mind. Or take the case of Evelyn Waugh, the envious outside chronicler of the upper class, who probably wished he'd gone to Eton instead of the humbler Lancing College. And in a typical act of one-up-manship, he sent his character Sebastian Flyte there in his most nostalgic novel Brideshead Revisited.

Sebastian, significantly, starts the book as the epitome of glamour but undergoes a decline as the story proceeds. Waugh's mixed feelings about Eton may also have been coloured by the fact that his first wife, also called Evelyn, had an affair with an old Etonian. As this parade of writers suggests, Eton has been a hothouse for literary development. Like Fleming and Orwell, Paul Watkins began writing at Eton, and he writes in Stand Before Your God that he tied a pencil to his bed frame so he could scribble ideas on the wall when he woke at night.

He wrote the first two drafts of his debut novel Night Over Day Over Night at Eton, when he was "The Eton library has the original draft, which I wrote by hand," he says. What did Eton teach him?

When I got out into the world, nobody cared that I was writing books until those books got published. For Okwonga, it was a sense of meeting society's expectations — but also his own — from such a privileged education. And I think I've carried that my entire career, this sense of, 'I have to achieve something, I have to make my time worth it. She said, 'you haven't wasted your talent'.

Which is a very powerful thing to be told, because you go to a place like that, which is such a privilege, and you feel that keenly, every week you're there. You go out into the world, going: 'I've got to do something with this'. Love books? If you would like to comment on this story or anything else you have seen on BBC Culture, head over to our Facebook page or message us on Twitter.

In England the term private school is used to refer to any school which is run to make a profit. Among the most famous public schools are Eton, Harrow and Winchester. Baloo55th Answer has 12 votes. Baloo55th 19 year member replies Answer has 12 votes. As has been said, originallythey were schools for the public - with public having a rather limited definition. A bit like the difference between society and Society State schools are usually run by local authorities not the government, and most church schools are part of the local authority educational system for all practical purposes.

City academies are run by private bodies but paid for by the government - and count as local schools but the local authority has nothing to do with their administration. You try working in the system. Source: attendance at a minor public school founded for the education of local boys not too far off years ago and over a decade of working in the local authority educational system.

Get a new mixed Fun Trivia quiz each day in your email. Unable to attach themselves to people intimate relationships with other children are discouraged by a morbid fear of homosexuality , they are encouraged instead to invest their natural loyalties in the institution. This made them extremely effective colonial servants: if their commander ordered it, they could organise a massacre without a moment's hesitation witness the detachment of the officers who oversaw the suppression of the Mau Mau, as quoted in Caroline Elkins's book, Britain's Gulag.

It also meant that the lower orders at home could be put down without the least concern for the results. For many years, Britain has been governed by damaged people. I went through this system myself, and I know I will spend the rest of my life fighting its effects.

But one of the useful skills it has given me is an ability to recognise it in others. I can spot another early boarder at metres: you can see and smell the damage dripping from them like sweat.

The Conservative cabinets were stuffed with them: even in John Major's "classless" government, 16 of the 20 male members of the cabinet had been to public school; 12 had boarded. Privately educated people dominate politics, the civil service, the judiciary, the armed forces, the City, the media, the arts, academia, the most prestigious professions - even, as we have seen, the Charity Commission. They recognise each other, fear the unshaped people of the state system and, often without being aware that they are doing it, pass on their privileges to people like themselves.

The system is protected by silence. Because private schools have been so effective in moulding a child's character, an attack on the school becomes an attack on all those who have passed through it. Its most abject victims become its fiercest defenders. How many times have I heard emotionally stunted people proclaim "it never did me any harm". In the Telegraph last year, Michael Henderson boasted of the delightful eccentricity of his boarding school.

One foolish fellow, Brown by name, was given a double order mark for taking too much custard at lunch. How can you not warm to a teacher who awards such punishment? So long as you pulled your socks up, and didn't let the side down, you wouldn't be for the high jump. Which is as it should be.