Edward Balston---the man in love with Eton College

It’s bad enough to learn that nineteen British prime Ministers attended Eton College without learning recently, as I did, that one Eton man was so enamoured of the benefits of a classical education that he seriously suggested that Latin and Greek were the only subjects that should be taught in the classroom.That man was not, incidentally, Boris Johnson, but Edward Balston.

Balston—the son of William, that famous papermaker familiar to all students of palaeography—attended Eton in the 1820s and early 30s and then entered  King’s College, Cambridge in 1836. Awarded the Browne Medal for Latin verse every year from 1836 to 1839, he was unusually elected Fellow of King’s in 1839, two years before he  graduated, though why it took him five years to gain his B.A. is not adequately explained. In 1842 he became a priest.

Balston loved Eton so much that he couldn’t wait to return

The Shortbread Eating Primer

Found, a genuine British schoolroom memento - a 'treated' copy of  Benjamin Hall Kennedy's Shorter Latin Primer recently described by Mary Beard in The Independent as 'the Rolls Royce of textbooks'. Certainly it is one of the longest lived -120 years after its publication it is still the best-selling book in the Classics section of most college bookshops. As Mary B says 'It took only the addition of a few extra letters and lines to turn The Shorter Latin Primer into The Shortbread Eating Primer.'

This copy (1938) comes with  serious schoolroom wear and ink blotches worthy of Molesworth...