I would buy extremely high end if my wife would allow. But she won’t so as sleep badly.

I know, it ridiculous. More important than car, dishwasher, laundry, maybe even wedding planner. Mark you: getting one high quality vacuum cleaner plus of of the hand Dysons is also important.

I somehow owned two different editions of the multi-volume Children’s Encyclopedia when I was a kid and devoured them both several times. I’m sure this is just as good.

The world is full of mysteries we can never hope to solve.

Yes. Also there’s a LOT of supplementation/compensation by more affluent parents esp in less affluent districts.

At minimum increased numbers of extremely credible death threats that he knows he and his family will receive for the coming year or so. Not as bad as all those Republicans who spoke at the Democratic convention, for sure.

The thing is— for most working class kids going to a grammar school did help them. It’s just that secondary mods harmed their siblings/neighbours more. It’s seems very hard for people to think about systems.

Grammar schools weren't hated as such. Just: nobody wanted their kid in a secondary modern. Which was always a risk. (I attended a successful grammar school, then a blighted comprehensive. The latter was, I suspect, better. Many grammar schools coasted, because they could. Still do I suspect).

Adam Swift and I were each planning to write a book about the family: after years of talking at some point we realised that our ideas were too intertwined for either of us to claim authorship of anything we wrote, so wrote one together.

Well. Wikipedia says East Sussex (so what do I know!) and that they did eventually relent but it’s written in Irish.