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JB: No, I didn't think it was a good thing. It sounds absurd now, but during the war, 1917 to 1918, there were some air raids on London. And that was the only reason that my brother and I went away to boarding school; he was eleven, I was ten.
VH: The war was, of course, quite different for Americans.
JB: The air raids were thought by my parents to be unsettling to us children. I think their idea was mistaken. The raids were very trivial, but anyway, that was, in fact, the reason we were sent away, at that age. My parents didn't really believe in it. There were plenty of children, boys anyway, who enjoyed boarding school in their teens, but that was different. I'm very much against young children going to boarding school.
‘John Bowlby: An Interview’, by Virginia Hunter, 15 February 1990. Transcript, Archives, Tavistock Joint Library.
At John Bowlby's eightieth birthday party which I organized for the Association of Child Psychotherapists Programme Planning Committee, I asked him what the best part of being eighty was. ‘Having your enemies have to admit you were right!’ he replied.
Ever spent a night in hospital? I had my tonsils out at seven and spent quite a long time in a hospital in Hove. I didn't mind the tonsils being removed; I minded having my mum removed.
‘Upfront’.Observer Magazine, 8 February 2009, p. 7.
… the ultimate principle from which the whole of my special views are derived may be formulated in the general proposition that libido [energy] is not primarily pleasure