From Bedales to the Boche

AN ARCHIVAL RESOURCE ON EDUCATION FROM ENVELOPEBOOKS

How progressive schooling inspired creativity in the early 1900s

Robert Best and his younger brother Frank were brought up in prosperous middle-class Birmingham in the 1890s. Their father ran Britain's most successful lighting factory, wanted his boys to enter the business, and sent them to the best art school in Germany to learn their trade, because of his admiration for German innovation.

Each spent a year there, befriending the families they stayed with. But within a few years of returning to England, war broke out and both eagerly enlisted in the army. How was it possible for allies to become enemies, and what motivated the boys' enthusiasm to fight?

In this memoir of the first two decades of the 20th century, Robert Best recalls the idealistic values that the boys learned while attending the most progressive boarding school of the time - Bedales - and how the spirit of the school carried them through the challenges of trench warfare in Northern France.

He talks in fascinating detail about what they learned at school and as enthusiastic First World War pilots in the Royal Flying Corps, of the boys' inventiveness and humour, and of their shared ambition to become music hall entertainers.