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How the lost boys found a voice

A fly-on-the-wall tour of a residential school for boys at the edge of society is an eye-opener in the extreme, says Ian Bell.

AT Ballikinrain, the ghosts of former occupants must recoil, now and then, and wonder what the world has come to. Sometimes even the living can share the thought.

The late-nineteenth-century baronial pile at Balfron, near Stirling, was once an imposing private residence.