St. Stephens Academy, Yorkshire, 1931. A world unto itself, populated by boys reveling in lifes first big mistakes and men still learning how to live with the consequences of their own. They live a cloistered life, exotic to modern eyes, founded upon privilege, ruled by byzantine and often unspoken laws, haunted by injuries both casual and calculated. Yet within those austere corridors can be found windows of enchantment, unruly love, and a wild sort of freedom, all vanished, it seems, from our world. Told from a variety of viewpointsincluding that of unhappy Housemaster John GrievesGrievous takes us deep inside the crucible of St. Stephens while retaining a clear-eyed, contemporary sensibility, drawing out the urges and even mercies hidden beneath the schools strict, unsparing surface. The Academy may live by its own codes, but as with the world around ita world the characters must ultimately faceit already contains everything necessary to shape its people or tear them apart.