Life at a day school, after several years’private tuition, must have been difficult enough for Bernard, but to have to become a boarder at the age of 12, on the verge of puberty, when many other boys would have been boarding since the age of 8 (or even younger), was a particularly insensitive decision by his father. Further uprooting to UCS, an institution set in a great city a hundred miles from Leamington, is likely to have compounded the feelings of isolation and introspection so evident in Spilsbury’s later life. The constant changes in schooling meant that Bernard never had the opportunity to forge friendships during his formative years or to carve a niche in school life. The seeds of his mistrust of others, the characteristics of secrecy and the roots of a culture of betrayal may have arisen during this disturbed adolescence.
我就不由自主地联想到一些类似总裁小说设定(???