"get a coating"

Solution 1:

I thought this use of coating was rather common, but looking in a selection of online dictionaries, I have only been able to find it documented in Collins, who define it (sense 3) as:

(English Midlands, dialect) a severe rebuke; ticking-off

So the sense is here that the author of the book writes some angry, nasty, negative, or at least critical things about this Swales person (whoever that is—someone who’s known not to be in good standing with the author, at any rate).

The word can also be used when referring to physical ‘rebukes’, to mean a sound thrashing:

He was attacked by some thugs on the way home from the pub the other night. Got a real coating too, by the sounds of it.

I have always thought that this sense comes from the use of coating to mean a layer of paint on a wall: the person who gets the real coating is figuratively covered in a thin layer of punches or criticisms. Thinking more closely about it, I realise it might just as well be an extension of the normal meaning of a coat, i.e., the person is ‘dressed’ in punches and criticism, wearing them like a coat.

Solution 2:

Superficially, a real coating and a real hiding may both seem related to outer coverings. However, noun hiding (“A beating or spanking”) apparently derives from verb hide (“To beat with a whip made from hide”), as distinct from the noun's sense, “One's own life or personal safety, especially when in peril”, where hide is like skin.

Note, ngrams shows a real coating to have little or no currency in books, and shows a real pasting as slightly less common than a real hiding.

The difference is more pronounced in ngrams for got a coating, got a pasting, got a hiding, with the latter far more common than the first two.

Solution 3:

In London in early 1980s I heard the phrase used to mean making fun of someone too - not physical violence but lighthearted verbal banter. e.g. 'He had a ridiculous haircut and we gave him a right coating about it.' or 'You'll get a coating if you turn up looking like mate.'

Solution 4:

My granny told me that her husband, a policeman, in the early part of last century, wore a weatherproof cape. To prevent it blowing over his head, he filled the hem with leadshot. An uncooperative client was liable for a good "coating" with that cape...