Or so it was until today. This morning, on my way into School, halfway down the Lower Corridor, I found Jimmy Watt with a stepladder, taking down the Honours Boards, scars, stories, and all.

“Sorry, boss,” he told me. “Orders from the New Head. We’re going to have display boards instead. You know, for the parents.”

I was too stunned to say anything. The spaces where the boards had hung were framed with dust, revealing the paintwork of decades past: powdery patches of sky blue; iron gray; or that curious hospital green. Nowadays, the plasterwork is usually painted magnolia, with the wooden panels painted in brown to hide the scars; but no one paints under the Honours Boards, and the result looked unspeakably sad; a row of trompe l’oeil windows, looking onto a blind wall.

“The parents?” I said at last. “What the hell have the parents got to do with it? The Honours Boards belong to St. Oswald’s, they’re not something you can just move because some bloody interior decorator tells you they’re out of style!”

Jimmy looked mournful. “Sorry, boss.”

I took a breath. There was no point in berating Jimmy—nicknamed “Forty Watt” by some of my less tolerant colleagues, he’s paid to do what he is told, and would never argue with a superior.

“What kind of display boards?” I said.

Jimmy seemed to brighten a little. “Nice ones. Like in the lobby,” he said.

For a moment I imagined it. Progress Through Tradition. The Lower Corridor stripped of its past and converted into a glossy brochure. Yes, the parents would like it. The parents like anything that makes them believe that their money is buying them something more than just teachers, classrooms, chalk, and dust. St. Oswald’s parents are paying fees that seem to them extortionate; and value for money, in their eyes, means more than traditions going back to the sixteenth century.

It means computers; science labs; impressive new facilities. As if a good schoolmaster wasn’t worth a hundred new computers. I may have said something of the sort—I may even have raised my voice—because as I was expressing myself, Thing Two, aka Ms. Buckfast, came out of the office that had once belonged to Pat Bishop and fixed me with the kind of smile a nurse might give to a lunatic.

“Is there a problem?” she said.

“Yes, I think there is,” I said. “Much as I appreciate the quaint reasoning that led to the appointment of a Rebranding Guru, if that’s what you are, St. Oswald’s has been standing for a lot longer than either of us. I don’t think its demolition counts as progress of any kind.”

That might have been a little too blunt, I told myself, a little too late.

Ms. Buckfast blinked at me. “You must be Mr. Straitley,” she said.