Latest news with #StTrinian's
Times
06-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Paloma Faith: ‘Adele gave me the best tip for motherhood'
Singer-songwriter Paloma Faith, 43, was born in east London. She has released six albums and the hits Can't Rely on You and Only Love Can Hurt Like This. She won a Brit award in 2015 for best female solo artist, was a judge on the talent show The Voice and has starred in the films St Trinian's and The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus, and the TV series Pennyworth. She lives in Hackney with her two daughters, aged eight and four, whom she shares with her ex-partner, Leyman Lahcine, a French artist. I've been waiting for my mum to die my whole life. She had a brain tumour in her pituitary gland when she was pregnant with me. Before that she'd had five
Telegraph
07-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Russell Brand: ‘My behaviour was normal in the diabolical culture'
Russell Brand has said his 'promiscuous' behaviour was considered normal in a 'diabolical culture' after being charged with rape and sexual assault. The comedian and actor insisted he was innocent of the allegations, but had nevertheless been 'captured by a kind of darkness' in a society that celebrated the 'relentless pursuit of pleasure'. Brand, 50, was charged on Friday with two counts of sexual assault, one count of indecent assault, one count of rape and one count of oral rape over a six-year period. 'In those giddy and hedonistic days, those ludicrous, dark days… I must have been captured by a kind of darkness,' he said in a two-minute clip posted on his social media accounts. 'But remember, for 22-and-a-half years, I've been drug and alcohol free, and I have a pretty good memory of accounts. 'I also know that I am a person that very much respects the idea of consent. Also I do respect the rights of the complainants to total anonymity and total privacy. 'I have complete respect for the system of justice and will be fully cooperative, knowing in my heart I'm completely innocent of these allegations.' I don't believe in the Statute of Limitations; I believe that if somebody is guilty of doing something, no matter how long ago it was, justice must be served. That is why I can confidently say that I am innocent in regards to the allegations made against me. Christ be… — Russell Brand (@rustyrockets) April 7, 2025 Brand, who starred in St Trinian's and Forgetting Sarah Marshall, claimed that his 'hedonism and promiscuity' had been considered normal in a culture that celebrated a 'kind of casual godlessness' and 'false gods'. 'I lived within jurisdiction of a broken and… ultimately, I'm not going to say evil, but somewhat diabolical culture that I participated in ways that were normal in that culture, in all manner of activity that amounts to hedonism and promiscuity,' he said. Calling himself a 'broken man and sinner', Brand admitted that his former lifestyle had been 'exploitative' because people slept with him because of his fame. Brand is accused of sexually abusing four women in London and the Bournemouth area between 1999 and 2005, and is expected to appear before Westminster Magistrates' Court next month. Detectives launched an 18-month investigation into the actor in 2023, after The Sunday Times and Channel 4 Dispatches published an investigation in which several woman accused him of sexual assault and emotional abuse. He denied the allegations.
Yahoo
29-03-2025
- General
- Yahoo
When single sex schools die, we will all be poorer
I didn't go to boarding school, but some small part of me feels as if I did because my inner life was vividly informed by books that supplied the requisite details: tuck boxes, luggage labels, dormitories, matrons, sanitoriums and exeats. Our family bookshelves heaved with Enid Blyton's Malory Towers, Anthony Buckeridge's Jennings series and, most blissful of all, Geoffrey Willans' Molesworth escapades and Ronald Searle's St Trinian's volumes. Even when my reading wasn't directly concerned with the single-sex boarding experience, girls and boys in children's literature were inevitably travelling home, or to stay with a guardian (the staple rule in children's books dictating that parents must be removed to make adventure possible), with initialled metal trunks, ready to let off steam. So seductive were these books that, aged 10, I idly daydreamed about being banished to a remote, cliff-top ladies' college. Or, better still, toiling as the school's maid after my father died, having lost his fortune investing in a friend's diamond mine, like Sara in Frances Hodgson Burnett's A Little Princess. But I can't help wondering how the shelves of children will look in 20 years after all the upheavals in the private education sector. Surely the subject of single-sex boarding schools will be firmly relegated to the realms of fantasy, if it informs literature at all. This week The Telegraph revealed that Labour's imposition of VAT on school fees has had a particularly brutal effect on single-sex independent schools, which are closing or going co-ed at a rate of knots. Once boys public schools littered the land, including many ropey ones (think of Evelyn Waugh's Pennyfeather in Decline and Fall, teaching at Llanabba Castle School). Now there are only four all-boys boarding schools left in the UK: Eton, Harrow, Radley and Tonbridge. Meanwhile, all girls establishments are racing to take boys, despite studies showing girls do best when educated separately. Not only will children's shelves be changed by the upheaval, adult literature will be transformed too. So many books I've loved unlock British history and our national temperament – in particular our stiff upper-lip and fortitude – by taking an unsentimental look at boarding school life. Jane Eyre wouldn't linger long in the imagination had she not triumphed over the hideous deprivations she endured at Lowood School. Logan Mountstuart in William Boyd's Any Human Heart has a life underpinned by the friendships and rivalries he establishes at public school. More chilling, is Sebastian Faulks' fine novel Engleby, where the working-class anti-hero is at an 'ancient university', after winning a scholarship to Chatfield, a public school for the sons of naval officers. During his schooldays he was hideously bullied and called 'Toilet Engleby' for the heinous crime of not saying 'lavatory', like his posher classmates. If you think that sounds off-putting, then I can only say that literary memoirs like Charles Spencer's A Very Private Education and Antonia White's Frost in May are darker still. But they're also beautifully-written, salutary reminders that a late 20th-century revolution in the field of child psychology served to revolutionise private education, introducing the previously alien concept of wellbeing. Not all boarding-school lit is grim. Look at James Hilton's Goodbye Mr Chips, a tear-jerking love letter to the finest teachers, while many women would kill to take refuge from modern life at Angela Brazil's St Chad's. The sad fact is these time-honoured avenues of escapism will slowly disappear, along with the schools themselves. Future generations, schooled by AI, will never know the worlds of nuance summoned by the phrase 'chizz chizz'. It will all be another country. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Telegraph
29-03-2025
- General
- Telegraph
When single sex schools die, we will all be poorer
I didn't go to boarding school, but some small part of me feels as if I did because my inner life was vividly informed by books that supplied the requisite details: tuck boxes, luggage labels, dormitories, matrons, sanitoriums and exeats. Our family bookshelves heaved with Enid Blyton's Malory Towers, Anthony Buckeridge's Jennings series and, most blissful of all, Geoffrey Willans' Molesworth escapades and Ronald Searle's St Trinian's volumes. Even when my reading wasn't directly concerned with the single-sex boarding experience, girls and boys in children's literature were inevitably travelling home, or to stay with a guardian (the staple rule in children's books dictating that parents must be removed to make adventure possible), with initialled metal trunks, ready to let off steam. So seductive were these books that, aged 10, I idly daydreamed about being banished to a remote, cliff-top ladies' college. Or, better still, toiling as the school's maid after my father died, having lost his fortune investing in a friend's diamond mine, like Sara in Frances Hodgson Burnett's A Little Princess. But I can't help wondering how the shelves of children will look in 20 years after all the upheavals in the private education sector. Surely the subject of single-sex boarding schools will be firmly relegated to the realms of fantasy, if it informs literature at all. This week The Telegraph revealed that Labour's imposition of VAT on school fees has had a particularly brutal effect on single-sex independent schools, which are closing or going co-ed at a rate of knots. Once boys public schools littered the land, including many ropey ones (think of Evelyn Waugh's Pennyfeather in Decline and Fall, teaching at Llanabba Castle School). Now there are only four all-boys boarding schools left in the UK: Eton, Harrow, Radley and Tonbridge. Meanwhile, all girls establishments are racing to take boys, despite studies showing girls do best when educated separately. Not only will children's shelves be changed by the upheaval, adult literature will be transformed too. So many books I've loved unlock British history and our national temperament – in particular our stiff upper-lip and fortitude – by taking an unsentimental look at boarding school life. Jane Eyre wouldn't linger long in the imagination had she not triumphed over the hideous deprivations she endured at Lowood School. Logan Mountstuart in William Boyd's Any Human Heart has a life underpinned by the friendships and rivalries he establishes at public school. More chilling, is Sebastian Faulks' fine novel Engleby, where the working-class anti-hero is at an 'ancient university', after winning a scholarship to Chatfield, a public school for the sons of naval officers. During his schooldays he was hideously bullied and called 'Toilet Engleby' for the heinous crime of not saying 'lavatory', like his posher classmates. If you think that sounds off-putting, then I can only say that literary memoirs like Charles Spencer's A Very Private Education and Antonia White's Frost in May are darker still. But they're also beautifully-written, salutary reminders that a late 20th-century revolution in the field of child psychology served to revolutionise private education, introducing the previously alien concept of wellbeing. Not all boarding-school lit is grim. Look at James Hilton's Goodbye Mr Chips, a tear-jerking love letter to the finest teachers, while many women would kill to take refuge from modern life at Angela Brazil's St Chad's. The sad fact is these time-honoured avenues of escapism will slowly disappear, along with the schools themselves. Future generations, schooled by AI, will never know the worlds of nuance summoned by the phrase 'chizz chizz'. It will all be another country.
