William Collins bags Spencer's school memoir

William Collins will publish Charles Spencer’s chronicle and memoir about the "strangely secretive" world of his school.

Publishing director Arabella Pike has acquired UK and Commonwealth rights to A Very Private School: A Memoir by the historian and younger brother of Diana Princess of Wales recounting his experience at one of the most exclusive boarding schools in England.

Rights were bought from Caroline Michel at PFD. Aimee Bell at Simon & Schuster will publish in the US with publication is slated for March 2024.

HarperCollins declined to name the school. Spencer has previously discussed attending boarding school Maidwell Hall from the age of eight.

William Collins said of the Earl’s memoir: “A Very Private School offers a clear-eyed, firsthand account of a culture of cruelty at the school Spencer attended in his youth and provides important insights into an antiquated boarding system.

“Drawing on the memories of many of his schoolboy contemporaries, as well as his own letters and diaries from the time, he reflects on the hopelessness and abandonment he felt aged eight, viscerally describing the intense pain of homesickness and the appalling inescapability of it all.

"Exploring the long-lasting impact of his experiences, Spencer presents a candid reckoning with his past and a reclamation of his childhood.”

Pike said: “Charles Spencer’s beautifully written memoir recounts with raw honesty the crushing experience of being sent away to school and the irreversible distress of being separated from all that he knew and loved.”

Spencer commented: “I spent five years of my childhood in this school, trying to crack the code by which it lived. Now, 45 years on, I think I’m finally there. I’m writing this book before my memories of half a century ago tip over into that chasm of forgetfulness that shadows old age. Beyond my own experiences, I wanted to look at what, really, was going on in this strangely secretive place.

"This book is a blend of chronicle and memoir that’s intended to stand as a piece of modern history – a record of a time, not so far back, when things were quite different for children in these most privileged of English institutions."

Spencer has written seven history books. He co-hosts the “Rabbit Hole Detectives” podcast and has presented documentaries for the History Channel and has been interviewed in his capacity as an expert historian on several occasions by the BBC.