Britain’s “public,” which is to say private, schools have been around since at least the 14th century. The controversy over their place in the country’s life sometimes seems to have been raging for almost as long, although it really only took off a couple hundred years ago, the day before yesterday in a land of ancient grievances.

“Gilded Youth,” James Brooke-Smith ’s addition to the sizeable canon of unflattering accounts of these curious establishments, has plenty of room for familiar complaints: bullying, sadism, sexual abuse, emotional repression, entrenching “the privilege of the wealthy few,” and so on. But even those exhausted with this well-worn topic may be intrigued by Mr. Brooke-Smith’s examination of the surprisingly complex history of public school dissent—there were some inmates who struck back against what they saw as asylums.