The sun never sets on Eton’s empire

In class-conscious Britain no word has such resonance as “Eton”. Old Etonian actor Dominic West, star of US television series The Wire, once said that being a former pupil of the world’s most famous fee-paying boys’ boarding school carried “a stigma that is slightly above ‘paedophile’ in the media in a gallery of infamy”.

Parents and pupils can be nervous of breathing the name of the school, which has educated generations of British and foreign aristocrats. A woman in Scotland who sent her son to Eton once told me euphemistically that he was being educated “at school in the Thames Valley”: the school, founded in 1440 by King Henry VI, is located west of London.

Michael Gove, UK education secretary, touched a nerve when, in the Weekend Financial Times, he described as “ridiculous” and “preposterous” the concentration of Old Etonians in David Cameron’s inner circle, saying such a bastion of privilege did not exist in any other rich country. His point was to stress his determination to transform state education so future prime ministers would have a wider choice. But some also saw it as a swipe at the leadership ambitions of Boris Johnson, the Etonian London mayor. Mr Cameron, who has four Eton-educated advisers, is the 19th UK prime minister to have gone to the school. Is Britain ready for a 20th?

The previous one was Sir Alec Douglas-Home in the early 1960s, satirised as an out-of-touch figure. In the intervening years, six out of seven premiers went to state school. “Public schools” such as Eton (so called originally because entry was not restricted on the basis of religion, occupation or home location) were lampooned in the egalitarian climate of the 1960s, notably in Lindsay Anderson’s film If …Even today, cartoonists depict deputy prime minister Nick Clegg – educated at another public school, Westminster – as Mr Cameron’s “fag” (a nod to the public school practice whereby younger pupils were required to act as personal servants to senior boys, which faded out in the 1970s and 1980s).

But something has changed. Public school alumni increasingly dominate professions such as acting. Pop music, once a working-class preserve, now has public school stars such as Florence Welch, Laura Marling and Marcus Mumford. It is a British aspect of the increasing polarisation between the wealthy and the rest.

Public schools have used their advantages to give pupils the skills to succeed in the modern economy, more successfully in many cases than state schools. Eton has high entry standards. A fifth of its pupils are poorer children supported through bursaries; it also co-sponsors a state sixth-form college in east London and is helping to create a state boarding school in Berkshire.

The trends are, nonetheless, disheartening for those who hoped to see greater equality of opportunity. Mr Gove may be a divisive figure, but his aim here is surely the right one.

Save the cone

How can this happen? The ice-cream cone, one of the most brilliantly designed products in history, is losing its battle with the boring tub. According to Kantar Worldpanel, sales of cones or cornets in the UK fell 5.5 per cent last year despite a 6.9 per cent rise in overall ice-cream sales. Tubs of luxury ice cream to be eaten at home are leading the market.

A US government official once said: “The ice-cream cone is the only ecologically sound package known. It is the perfect package.” It has a sense of drama, too, not unlike human lives: a wide choice of beginnings, but the ice cream melts if you dither too long, ultimately vanishing into a narrowing tip of pleasure.

There are conflicting claims about who invented the cone. It was popularised at the 1904 St Louis World’s Fair, where several people claimed to have come up with it, but there are earlier accounts of edible ice-cream cones being used in England, France and Germany in the 19th century.

The biggest casualty of today’s trends is the Cornetto, the pre-filled cone invented in Naples in 1959 and mass-marketed around the world after Unilever bought it in 1976. With appetites growing, the 90ml Cornetto is up against large “handheld ice-creams” such as Unilever’s own Magnum super-lolly.

The Cornetto is fighting back, though. This month Unilever launches the Cornetto Choc ‘n’ Ball, a 160ml monster topped with a chocolate-covered ice cream ball.

brian.groom@ft.com

Twitter: @GroomB