ABSTRACT
Lindsay Anderson has claimed that the public school film is not simply an attack on the public school system but that the school is being used as a metaphor for the Establishment. However, the very fact that the public schools contribute so much to the creation of that Establishment turns the attack back on them in the end. The public school system influenced not only the administrators but even the system of colonial administration. As Sir Kenneth Bradley wrote of the public school system: Small wonder that a handful of men who had this schooling could keep the Pax Britannica right round the world over the teeming millions of the old empire with justice and mercy as well as they did. The Imperial archetype, both in his specifically Imperial films and in his non-Imperial films too, is sustained by and regulates his life according to the code, the principal product of the English public school system.
