In 1912 Fredrick Brereton (East 1890), an author of stories for boys whose plots usually took place in a war setting, published King of Ranleigh, a ripping yarn set at a fictional public school. However, it was apparent to anyone who had been to Cranleigh that Brereton’s setting was his old school, and he made almost no attempt to disguise the fact. His opening description is of a school situated in Surrey “three parts of the way up a sloping hill which is bathed by sun on every side. See it then, a red-brick pile, clad with creeper, with its clock tower and its chimneys and pinnacles. Cast your eyes upon the surrounding countryside and admit, as admit you must, that never was there a more ideal position. For the village is a mile away. The school stands beautifully isolated.” Brereton includes Cranleigh slang (“thick slices of bread and butter, known colloquially as ‘toke’”) and punishments (“for their various crimes they would have to assemble in the quad after dinner, there to be marched to and fro and round and round by a prefect as weary of the task as they were”). He even uses Merriman as a template for his headmaster – Dr Layman – who is “clean shaven, save for a pair of whiskers, grey haired, he presented a face which was the essence of kindness … save when he had cause for severity”.