6/3/2023 0 Comments Summerhill alexander neill![]() ![]() ![]() It continues in Leiston, Suffolk, where it has been since 1927, after first opening in Germany six years earlier. It briefly attracted attention at the turn of the century when David Blunkett, then education secretary, tried to close it – complaining, among other things, that it had no separate toilets for boys, girls or staff – only to beat an ignominious retreat when challenged before a tribunal. Today, Summerhill, run by Readhead, who took over from her mother (Neill's widow) in 1985, is almost forgotten. ![]() Her development as Neill's only child, hailed by him as "the beginnings of a new civilisation", was of consuming public interest. Her father was AS Neill, founder and principal of Summerhill free school, which fascinated and appalled the press because it didn't make children go to lessons and (reportedly) let them run around without clothes. Readhead, "bright-eyed, strong-limbed and unafraid of people", was billed as "The Child Who Never Gets Slapped". She was aged just two at the time and the magazine was Picture Post – long defunct, but then selling more than a million copies weekly. E ven in these bewildering times, it can safely be said that Zoe Readhead is the only school principal to have featured naked on a magazine cover. ![]()
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