 In 1856 F.H. Bradley’s schooling began at Cheltenham College; in 1861 he was transferred to Marlborough College, then under his half-brother’s Headship. While at Cheltenham he began learning German; he read at least some of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason while still at school, though it is not clear that this was in the original language. In the winter of 1862–3 he contracted typhoid fever (at one stage expected to kill him), followed shortly by pneumonia. Surviving both, he was protected from further exposure to the rigours of English public school life by leaving Marlborough in 1863.