FIND out what life was like in girls' boarding schools in the last century at a very special literary event.

The Friends of Bridport Literary Festival is hosting an afternoon at The Tithe Barn in Symondsbury at 2.30 pm on Monday June 12.

Some of the audience will be slightly foxed by the title of the talk: Term & Conditions: Life in Girls’ Boarding-Schools from 1939 – 1979.

The writer, Ysenda Maxtone Graham, will be in conversation with Prue Keely about the uncertainties and eccentricities of boarding-school life in the last century.

If you chose to dispatch your daughters away from home to be educated, the experience was not only character forming but hilarious as well.

Today it is hard to grasp the carelessness with which some parents thought that education away from home equated with discipline and preparation for marriage! Ysenda speaks of a lost tribe – those boarding school women – grandmothers now and the backbone of the nation.

Tickets are £12 to include tea and refreshments. They are available from the Bridport Tourist Information Centre on 01308 424 901

or on the day at the door of the Tithe Barn.