History Boys

An unruly bunch of bright, funny sixth-form boys in pursuit of sex, sport and a place at university. A maverick English teacher at odds with the young and shrewd supply teacher. A headmaster obsessed with results; a history teacher who thinks he's a fool. In Alan Bennett's new play, staff room rivalry and the anarchy of adolescence provoke insistent questions about history and how you teach it; about education and its purpose.

Alan Bennett has been one of our leading dramatists since Beyond the Fringe in the 1960s. His television series Talking Heads has become a modern-day classic. He received an Academy Award nomination for his screenplay for The Madness of King George, and the film of his screenplay of The Lady in the Van starred Dame Maggie Smith. His work for the stage includes Forty Years On, an adaptation of The Wind in the Willows, The Habit of Art and People. His collections of prose are Writing Home, Untold Stories (PEN/Ackerley Prize for autobiography), Keeping On Keeping On and House Arrest. His fiction includes The Uncommon Reader, Smut: Two Unseemly Stories and Two Besides.