Follow My Leader

Three fourteen-year-olds set out from Mountjoy Preparatory School for the entrance examination at Templeton, an English boarding school near the sea. Coote, Richardson and Heathcote trade jokes and muddled answers while trying to hide their nerves. Even the school gates and the clothes of passing pupils seem grand to these anxious newcomers. Talbot Baines Reed builds this school novel around the gap between the boys' admiration for Templeton and the awkward business of finding their place there.

School life brings scholarships, promotion and the competition between studying and sport. Ponty, the departing school captain, looks back on opportunities he missed to help younger boys, then urges Mansfield to combine firmness with encouragement. Alongside its comic conversations, the book gives attention to the responsibilities of leadership and the influence older pupils have on juniors. Readers interested in boarding school fiction will find examinations, friendships and questions of conduct woven into everyday school life.