Why public schoolboys like me and Boris Johnson aren’t fit to run our country

Our elite schools foster emotional austerity and fierce clique loyalty. Here a privately educated writer of the prime minister's generation reveals the lasting damage public schools do

• Scroll down for a Q&A with Richard Beard

I had a feeling I couldn't immediately place. I wanted to go out but wasn't allowed. Shelves were emptying at the nearest supermarket and instead of fresh fruit and vegetables I was eating British comfort food - sausages and mash, pie and beans. My freedom to make decisions like an adult was limited. I wondered when I'd see my mum again.

March 2020, first week of the first lockdown: I was 53 years old and felt like I was back at boarding school. Which wouldn't have mattered, but for the fact that at a time of national crisis my generation of boarding-school boys found themselves in charge.