ABSTRACT
The second largest group of boys in the school between 1929 and 1950, after those from the families of businessmen, was that of sons of men in the professions, solicitors, doctors, bank managers and Civil Servants. Success in the careers parents favoured required not only the intellectual ability to pass examinations, but also the drive and ambition to succeed in a competitive hierarchy. For professional parents academic success and character training were often inseparable. Boys who had no parents or prep school experience of the powerful forces of socialisation in such institutions arrived at the school without friends, survival techniques or models of manliness to follow. Such a boy was Lionel Mason, an orphan, sensitive and unschooled in the public school world of boys and men, having spent his childhood with a variety of elderly relations. As National Service was compulsory, the school Corps provided useful preliminary training and Malcolm and his pals joined in 1947.
