Set in a boys' senior school in the Eighties, "The History Boys" encapsulates many of the current arguments about the purpose of education, with Alan Bennett's characteristically witty and moving dialogue describing both the tussles of staffroom rivalry and the anarchy of adolescence.
"The school gives them an education. I give them the wherewithal to resist it. Examine a boy and he is tamed already. Only examine him and you can tax him, empanel him, enlist him, interrogate him and put him in prison. You have only to grade him and you have got him."
There is Hector, a romantic, motorbike-riding maverick English teacher with a habit of quoting poetry, who is devoted to the passing on of knowledge and a love of literature to his beloved unruly boys. A group of eight have been selected by the league table-obsessed headmaster for the Oxbridge entry examination. The wry Mrs. Lintott supplies the more traditional book-learning approach, but the headmaster has also hired a young supply teacher, Irwin, who is the polar opposite of Hector, to coach the boys in the clever tricks of exam-taking and interviews.
There is a fundamental clash between the passion of Hector and the cynicism of Irwin at the centre of the piece. Around this swirls a broader look at styles and philosophies of teaching, suffused with the very human, and often comic, stories of the boys as they pursue sex, sport and the much sought-after places at university.
I enjoyed the adaptation for radio by Richard Wortley and performed by the original theatre cast ...
... but at just four dollars I couldn't resist buying the movie as well.
How did I get here? Well, someone reminded me of Alan Sillitoe's "The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner", which I had read and watched many years ago, and followed it with, "Another northern author I enjoy is Alan Bennett who wrote 'The History Boys' and 'The Lady in the Van', both of which were made into films". I've seen "The Lady in the Van", starring the unforgettable Maggie Smith, but "The History Boys" revealed a gap in my education which I was keen to fill. And I'm pleased I did!
And I must buy and read Alan Bennett's memoirs "Untold Stories":
