Today, it’s hard to grasp the casual carelessness and even hostility with which the middle and upper classes once approached the schooling of their daughters. Education, far from being regarded as something that would set a girl up for life, was seen as a handicap which could render her too unattractive for marriage, and with some notable exceptions such as Cheltenham, schools went along with the idea. In ‘Terms & Conditions’, author Ysenda Maxtone Graham speaks to members of a lost tribe – the boarding-school women, grandmothers now and the backbone of the nation, who look back on their experiences with a mixture of horror and humour.