Morag Edwards / Isobel Ross, "Almost Boys: The Psychology of Co-Ed Boarding in the 1960s"

 

Before retiring, Morag Edwards had worked as an educational psychologist for over thirty years, with a career focus on children who had experienced early relationship trauma and neglect. She was a published author before leaving work but the demands of family and professional life meant that her writing ambitions, while powerful and enduring, had always remained stuck within the margins of her life. Morag now writes historical fiction as Morag Edwards and is published by Bloodhound Books. The third volume in her Jacobite trilogy, The Jacobite’s Heir, is due to be published in September 2025. Morag writes contemporary fiction as Isobel Ross, also published by Bloodhound Books, and is working hard on completing another domestic suspense novel. 

Morag recently gave a talk at Literary Leicester Festival 2025, as part of the "Bullying, School and Power" event, along with James Scudamore and Jonathan Taylor. You can listen to the podcast of the event here.  

About Almost Boys, by Morag Edwards / Isobel Ross
Morag was a pupil at a co-educational boarding school in Scotland from 1965 to 1971. Unique about this school was that boy boarders far outnumbered girl boarders and by the late 1960s, the adults in charge had become confused about their duty of care. She now uses her background to help others understand the psychological implications of early boarding for young children and actively campaigns to end early boarding. 

Under the author name Isobel Ross, Morag has written a memoir about her own boarding school experience: Almost Boys: The Psychology of Co-Ed Boarding in the 1960s. The narrative is based upon her memories and diaries written between 1969 and 1971, embedded within the framework of developmental psychology, Attachment Theory and Adverse Childhood Experience (ACEs). The memoir was self-published early in 2024, in order to catch a growing wave of concern that young children were still sent away from their families to be educated. This proved to be the right decision, as Morag has regularly been asked to appear on podcasts, webinars and speak at conferences, providing a voice for women ex-boarders, particularly those who attended co-ed establishments, currently under-represented in the growing boarding school literature. 

From Almost Boys
In my first winter living in Fairview, I wouldn’t hurry back to the boarding house after school. Instead, I stayed behind in the dusk, on the school steps, watching the day girls amble towards their lamp-lit homes, chattering in groups. I felt an aching hunger for a place that might feel homely. Even without a parent actually present, the parents’ homemaking would create a continuity of care for these girls. There would be a gas or electric fire, a television, a tin of biscuits, coats and shoes in the hall. During term time, I struggled to remember my home, even though my older sister was now a boarder. It seemed to exist behind an opaque wall, a place that never truly came into focus. School was real and vivid, each moment lived in the present but couldn’t be talked about at home. My parents’ interest was limited and explanations of the cultural minutiae felt too lengthy and complicated. Unsure and lacking confidence about their decision to send us away, once we were at home it was clear they did not want to hear about our lives at school, embedding and reinforcing the gap between our home selves and our school personalities.