Product reviews for A School Built on Ethos

Handscombe is the Montaigne of education writers. His book is a beautifully written smorgasbord; a feast of thought spread out before you. Or maybe it would be better thought of as a carefully curated exhibition, the exhibits chosen for the light they shed on each other and, obliquely, on the process of leading a school. Handscombe never tells you what to do. Instead, he provides fleeting glimpses by means of an extraordinary range of assembly topics in which the breadth of his interests and erudition sparkle and glister as he cajoles, exhorts and guides the students who have been privileged - whether they knew it or not - to be present at these addresses in which the very human core of a school is refracted.