Part of me died that can't be reactivated

Beatings, neglect and sexual abuse at his hellish boarding school took a lifelong toll on Princess Diana's brother, and recalling the trauma took him to a dark place. But Earl Spencer hopes his new memoir will provide closure to victims

- Matt Nixson

WHEN Earl Spencer confided in friends that he was writing about the years of physical, emotional and sexual abuse he suffered at one of Britain's most exclusive prep schools, many suggested not unkindly that it might be a liberating experience.

But it wasn't until the acclaimed historian finished his soul-baring account of boarding at Maidwell Hall in Northamptonshire from the age of eight to 13 that he began to feel the weight he had carried for more than half a century beginning to lift.

Today, Princess Diana's brother admits the five-year endeavour was a "hellish" journey, through one of the worst periods of his formative years.

"People would go, 'Oh, that must be cathartic'. And I was thinking, "Well, I'd have thought it would be too, but really it isn't. It's retraumatising'," he says.

"I was going into quite a dark place. A classmate I hadn't seen for 50 years told me he'd 'left that box sealed for the last five decades'.

And in a way, I'd done the same. Opening it and unleashing those forces was horrifying." The resulting memoir, A Very Private School - its title refers to the cult of secrecy surrounding the school details Maidwell's brutal 1970s regime under its "terrifying and sadistic" headmaster, John Alexander Hector Porch, known to the boys as Jack.

A Jekyll and Hyde char acter, he charmed unwary parents, crafting reports laced with dark humour and rarely praising boys, except in a back-handed way the "mischievous sense of humour" being a smokescreen to suggest he must be popular with pupils. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

"I think it's the cunning of a pervert or a paedophile, or whatever he was," says Earl Spencer.

In fact, Porch ruled from 1963 to 1978 with a rod of iron and two canes, known as "The Flick" and "The Swish".