Straw hats and 'beaks' Can Harrow cash in on the US romance with boarding schools?

This autumn, Harrow school will open its first outpost in the US, a lush 170-acre waterfront campus in Long Island. For $75,000 (£56,000) a year, parents can wave off their children to a private school renowned for traditions such as calling teachers "beaks" and wearing straw hats.

- Arielle Domb

The new school is midway between New York City and the Hamptons, so parents with a seaside home can whisk away their darlings for a break.

Americans have long romanticized the British boarding school, from Harry Potter to Goodbye, Mr Chips – a novella and later film about a boarding school teacher that was initially serialized in the Atlantic Monthly.

It's not just the schools: castles, honorifics, lavish parties, a sense of history and the royal family have long made the British aristocracy attractive to US elites. Young Americans are even adopting UK accents and using an increasing amount of British English.

But while parents might be hoping British traditions rub off on their progeny, the school will be owned and operated by Amity, a company that runs a Harrow school in Bengaluru, India, but is a separate entity from the UK school, which was founded in 1572.