ABSTRACT
This chapter covers the two most significant events that happened to Christopher Milne and the author at secondary boarding school. Christopher was tortured by a group of students with a childhood recording of him singing his father’s famous poem “Vespers”. The incident is analysed using research around the relationship between notions of masculinity, bodies and violence. The abuse forces Christopher to adopt a Strategic Survival Personality (Duffell and Basset 2017) of “not bothering”, that suppressed who he was and led him to shut down emotionally. The author was subjected by the school principal to what was called “solitary confinement”, which involved being isolated for days from all contact with other students. A nurse intervenes, confronting the principal about what she is doing to the author. It leads into a discussion of the notion of “bystander”. The thinking that led the nun to engage in this practice is explored, including using the notion of torture rather than abuse to describe it.
