The Oath

The Oath is set in 1955. Beneath the well-polished veneer of a Northern England boarding school is something wicked and very, very unpleasant.

Senior pupils viciously bully and torment junior pupils who they consider to be inferior.

Jonathan Simon is a new boy at the school. He's warned about three monsters who share his dorm with him. They are Flicker, Sleeth and Tunk. But there's a "no snitching" code that is ruthlessly observed.

Simon befriends two other junior pupils, Ian Gracey, a pixie-faced boy and Arthur Crown. He is grossly overweight, but with a ready wit.

Whilst on a cross country run the three juniors decide to take a short cut and find themselves accidentally in the cadet rifle range. Sleeth is the Corpse Sergeant and puts them through some utterly degrading punishments.

The three junior pupils take a blood oath to ever allow themselves to be bullied again.

Loyalties will be tested to their limits and exactly how far will the pupils go to exact their revenges?

It's an interesting novel that takes a look under the hood of school life in the 1950s.

The book is published by The Book Guild at £8.99.