my first year of prep school, at the age of fourteen

I hate to be pedantic, but - fossilised fishhooks, you addle-pated clodpoll - what were you doing  in prep school at the age of fourteen? Prep school goes up to thirteen.

Not here it doesn't. So that would eliminate from the list the Wykehamites and the Benedictines (Glenstall Abbey, Appleforth) but not the other schools nsmed, or others that carefully remained unnamed, in these United States.

There are other problems with differences between England and America in education-institutional nomenclature. In England an American professor who comes to deliver a lecture at, say, Cambridge, on, say, legal history, and identifies himself as coming from this or that "college" may, unfortunately, be assumed by some of the English academics present to be on the staff of a glorified high school.  Americans know perfectly well that many American colleges, such as Dartmouth College, Amherst College, Williams College -- are as good or better than most, than almost all, of those "world-class" places called "universities." But not everyone in the outside world does understand. And among other results, quite a few colleges have decided to give themselves an academic promotion, and become "universities." And that implies a kind of wilful inattention to undergraduate education.

Like the Brontes, and not completely unlike Nabokov, with his Terra and Anti-terra (or whatever it was - I'm a bit numb and vague), Americans have a strangely unreal vision and version of England.

What, pray, is Appleforth? Ampleforth led astray by Eve? And all was for an apple, An apple that he took, As clerkes finden Written in their book.

And what's a Wykehamite? A follower of Wikka, hell bent on seducing those innocent Wykhamists?

And do you know what a fossilised fishhook is and - corrwumph - why it is really ozzard?

As for the college thing, well that works both ways. If someone says they went to Jesus College, then Oxbridge would be assumed. Otherwise "college" is - if referring to a British institution - second rate. If referring to an American or other foreign institution, then this should be adjusted where appropriate.

This has, in the last decade, been complicated by the fact that so many UK colleges now call themselves universities. Sooner or later, university will mean mediocre institution and college will mean something special.

Ampleforth it is, a Benedictine school just like Glenstal Abbey in Ireland, which is why one made me think of the other, and not Appleforth. A slip that I suspect was prompted by my distaste for the official website of the "Internationally-acclaimed historian" (as he puts it himself) William Dalrymple, an Amplefordian.

"Wykehamite" -- pertaining to Winchester, the school not the city, as much as "Wykehamist" or "Wykhamist" (your choice), but since usage is all, you're right, I should have ended not in "ite" but "ist."

Kindly go back on vacation. A rest will do me good.

Dear, oh dear. "Wykehamist" is correct, as you say, not "Wykhamist".  Mea culpa.

This always happens when I triumphantly pounce on someone else's mistakes.

Now I must go and eat ample pie.