As you will know, dear reader, the dwindled British empire, which once had dominion over
a quarter of the globe, is now made up of randomly dispersed islands. One of the nearest to Britain is Jersey, and
this is the ancestral island of our cover star. Jersey has always had a French connection to it, but the Cavill
family is aware and proud of its mainland roots. “My parents raised me and all my brothers as British, very
British,” Cavill says. “My mother is Scottish and Irish, and my father is English. It has always been a matter of
being proud to be British. It isn’t about turning your nose up at the rest of the world, it’s just that we are an
island that, despite all the odds, managed to survive all the other empires of history and became the largest empire
itself, and has still survived to be a world power. I think my parents just bred it into me to be proud, and I am.”
It is an unfashionable stance in a world in which patriotism and racism are too easily linked, where enjoying the
Last Night of the Proms or singing the national anthem with gusto is a guilty secret, lest you be sneered at.
Cavill’s Instagram account, where he has created interesting set pieces to wish the British and Irish Lions rugby
team good luck, shows he isn’t all talk, and all power to him.
Henry credits a strong sense of family, patriotism, and brothers to whom he remains close
for keeping him grounded. “I have brothers who will quite happily shoot me down when needed,” he says. “They have
always been very straightforward.” Considering one of his brothers is a lieutenant colonel in the Royal Marines,
that’s not hard to believe.
Henry went to Stowe, a prestigious and impossibly beautiful public school in
Buckinghamshire, southern England. Henry’s time there was troubled. He was bullied and teased, acquiring
retrospectively illogical nicknames such as ‘Fat Cavill’. It got worse when (in a particularly naïve quirk of some
private schools) his final two years of schooling became co-educational. Here, Henry got a hard lesson in how a
convergence of the sexes during adolescence can be a brutal time. “Introducing girls in the last two years is
probably the worst thing you can do,” he says. “Focus goes off work and you put boys from a highly stressful
situation into an even more stressful situation, which is not good during A-levels.”
It was at this point of the interview that Henry demonstrated his almost pious knack for
introspection, saying, “I look back and think, Thank God people were such dicks to me at school, because it taught
me an awful lot about people. As soon as the girls arrived — and I was not popular — all the cool guys would tell
them I was a knob. All the girls turned on me and then all the guys who were my friends went for the girls. I had a
handful of friends but it really surprised me. I was like, ‘Wow, you totally turned on me to be cool, in front of
those girls’.” This habit, his self-effacement, cropped up a few times in the interview: later on, when I asked
whether fame and appetite for success had helped overcome a sense of not being accepted at school, his response was
honest and analytical. “Yes, there is something to do with school, I definitely get a sense of vindication,” he
says. “But I have battled with that because that is an ego-based thing, a negative side to the ego that is
ultimately doing nothing but destroy.” Here is a man not interested in victimhood or dwelling in pain; rather,
growing from it.
Read the full interview in Issue 54 of The Rake, on newsstands now. Subscribe here.
With special thanks to Mark's Club.
