"Sex is completely taboo, especially in the form in which it actually arises at public schools. Occasionally girls enter into the stories, and very rarely there is something approaching a mild flirtation, but it is always entirely in the spirit of clean fun. A boy and a girl enjoy going for bycicle rides together - that is all it ever amounts to. Kissing, for instance, would be regarded as 'soppy'. Even the bad boys are presumed to be completely sexless. When the Gem and the Magnet, were started, it is probable that there was a deliberate intention to get away from the guity sexridden atmosphere that pervaded so much of the earlier literature for boys. In the nineties the Boy's Own Paper, for instance, used to have its correspondence full of terrifying warnings agains masturbation (...) In the Gem and Magnet sex simply does not exist as a problem. Religion is also taboo, in the hole thirty years' issue of the two papers the word 'God' probably does not occur, except in 'God save the King'. On the other hand, there has always been a very strong 'temperance' strain. Drinking and, by association, smoking are regarded as rather disgraceful even in an adult ('shady' is the usual word), but at the same time as something irresistibly fascinating, a sort of substitute for sex."
Decline of the English Murders, George Orwell
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