In the bitter winter of 1947, in a train rattling through the bleak flatlands of eastern England, a small boy clutches his teddy bear and wonders what the new school he has been shipped off to will prove to be like. Meanwhile on another train, a young man fresh from war service is heading gloomily towards the same, destination, where he hopes to escape from a confused sexual past and start a new life as a schoolmaster. Little do either imagine what horrors the brutal regime of Saint Eusebius Abbey has in store for them, or the dramas that will ensue when they challenge it. A Peculiarly English Education is a graphic but highly entertaining story of abuse, oppression and rebellion at an English prep school which would make the average prison camp look like paradise.