The truth behind the History Boys - Telegraph The truth behind the History Boys Making history: Alan Bennett and Nicholas Hytner Sentimental education: a scene from The History Boys 12:01AM BST 21 Jun 2004 Alan Bennett's new play The History Boys has received rave reviews – and caused a meltdown at the box office. As it continues in repertory at the National Theatre, the playwright and his director Nicholas Hytner held a platform discussion. Here, in this edited version of their conversation, they reveal the highs and lows of taking a play from a supermarket aisle to the stage Nicholas Hytner It would be fair to say that when he is writing a new play Alan Bennett doesn't just keep his cards close to his chest – they're glued there. We live quite close to each other so I see him often in the food aisles at Marks & Spencer and have nagged him relentlessly, ever since I came back to the National, for a new play. And about six months ago I ran into him cycling along to the shops and he said he might have something for me in a couple of weeks. I had no idea what he was going to write about. Never do.

So the first question is, why did you write it? Alan Bennett I think I started writing it about 18 months ago and I can see that, of the three teachers in the play, I've had experience of two of them. I'd been taught at my own school in Leeds by somebody like Mrs Lintott, in a very straightforward, factual way. And then the way I got a scholarship to Oxford and how I got my degree really was via the method the character called Irwin uses in the play. So in a sense, I am Irwin. The person I have had no experience of at all is Hector, the charismatic teacher; I only knew about teachers like that from talking to other people, and also from reading. Related Articles 24 January 2003: The National's new adventurer [interview with Nicholas Hytner] 21 Jun 2004 Temperamentally I cleave to that kind of teacher and that kind of teaching – while at the same time not thinking it practical. I suppose that the three teachers came out of trying to reconcile that. I think plays do tend to come out of things that you can't actually resolve other than by writing a play about them.

Though I'm nervous about going too much into how these things work because I'm frightened they might not work the next time. NH I think the play has generally been taken to be an unequivocal endorsement of Hector and his approach. It never felt like that to me. I think most parents would be, to a certain degree, dubious about a teacher who had absolutely no regard for results. You'd be more likely to support the headmaster's obsession with getting your children into university. The play is intellectually even-handed. There is nothing in it that says Hector right, Irwin wrong, Mrs Lintott wrong – and yet emotionally, it veers the other way. AB I think, of the three teachers, Stephen Campbell Moore, who plays Irwin, has the hardest job because he doesn't have the audience's sympathy until two thirds of the way through the second act. Both Hector and Mrs Lintott have the audience on their side whereas he – who is teaching and getting results, which, in the ordinary way, parents would approve of – is not thought to be sympathetic until he reveals himself as quite vulnerable. That came as a surprise to me when I saw it rehearsed. In a sense, it takes the actors to show you what you've written.

NH For those who haven't seen the play, Hector is the teacher who has no programme, who believes, to quote Housman, "all knowledge is precious whether or not it serves the slightest human use". Mrs Lintott believes that what the boys require is a firm foundation of fact. Irwin is the teacher brought in to get the boys into Oxbridge. He considers the truth to be something that can be manipulated to impress examiners and regards culture, poetry, art to be commodities that you can buy into to spice things up. That is essentially the ideological battleground of the play. So, do you think there is such a thing as absolute historical truth? AB I don't know. That's one of the reasons why I wrote the play. In the words of Rudge in the play, "History is just one fucking thing after another," which seems quite a brutish thing to say but was actually not said by him originally, but by Herbert Butterfield who was Professor of History at Cambridge in the '40s, only as he put it: "History is one bloody thing after another." The difference between the "bloody" and the "fucking" is what has happened in public discourse in the last 50 years.

The thing that struck me is that on the first night, we had a fire which set the sprinkler system off. At the end of that afternoon we had had our final notes session and everybody was in an up-beat mood because we'd had a week of very good previews, and I think Nick said, exactly as somebody says in the play, "Oh, nothing can go wrong now." Then within a hour you came into the theatre and the stage was six inches deep in water. So, just as happens in the play, events took us by surprise. And I don't get much further than that. History is one bloody thing after another. NH What about the other much debated topic in the play, the use of literature. Is it really enough to know literature by heart, or does literature provide us with something more practical? AB I think everybody wants to have learnt poems by heart at school. They look back to an age when their parents, or maybe their grandparents, could recite verse. My mother could recite very garbled and over-dramatised bits of poetry she'd learnt at school.

And whenever she went into poetry-reciting mode, the pose she took up was exactly the one she'd taken up when she was 10 years old. But people do feel that they ought to have this ingrained knowledge of poetry and regret not having it. It seems to me, in Hector's words, it is a kind of "insulation for the mind". And when you do come across people who have literature at their fingertips and can quote things off by heart, then it is very impressive and enviable. NH But Hector is not the most brilliant English teacher. He uses quotations that are not particularly apposite when he is in trouble, and his assertion that you don't need to understand poetry to appreciate it seems dodgy at best. AB I think it's true he's not an ideal teacher and he is sloppy and quotes stuff almost at random. But the boys see that. They see the shortcomings of Hector, Irwin and Mrs Lintott. I wanted to show that the boys are the ones who know more than any of the teachers. They will go their own way and they will carve out their own futures. They will take from each of these teachers what they want. That's what the slightly less than idyllic last scene shows.

The boys are not wholly nostalgic, nor are they wholly materialistic, and when they say what they've done in life, that is empiricism and experience winning through. NH Many of the characters live in a state – which I find characteristic of your plays – of frustrated possibility. Scripps, Posner, Irwin and Hector all, to some degree, are waiting for life to happen. AB I waited ages for that! Such criticism I've seen of the play is that I have put myself into it too obviously – and that I am Posner. But everybody watching the play says "I'm Posner" because he is the boy with a yearning, who seems to be getting nowhere and so is the saddest, and everybody sees themselves when young in that kind, protective way. NH This seems to me peculiarly English. Americans have found it unbearable that Posner turns into what they call a loser. An English audience simply expects it! I had an email from a very smart American friend saying, "But he's put up with all this teasing at school, he's popular with the boys, surely he would turn into a TV director." AB Well if he'd have been a writer, he'd be doomed as well!

But perhaps it is all to do with the English will to fail. We were conscious, before the play started, that because we'd worked together successfully so much (including the film of The Madness of George III, this will be the fifth time), there was a tremendous feeling that now we were going to come a cropper. You wouldn't get that in America. It's such an English feeling and I'm very often of that mind myself. And you must often get that with the National Theatre – the sense that you're having too good a time? NH This is a terrible thing to admit. I feel guilty every time it's not a flop. AB I've never had so much fun as rehearsing this play. We had a wonderful time. So by the time we came to the first preview, although how the audience took it wasn't actually irrelevant, at the same time you did feel you'd had such a good time, that was the important thing. There was a lot of discussion before we started rehearsals proper about the themes of the play and the people and poets who are mentioned in it.

If there's a lot of talk before rehearsal I generally get quite impatient, but this time I did think it was very valuable and it was a great contrast to my other school play, the first play I ever wrote, Forty Years On. That was as stiff with literary references as this play is but in 1968 we made no attempt whatsoever to educate the boys about what was in the play. It was partly that in The History Boys the boys have to initiate the questions, so they have to know what they are talking about, whereas the boys in 1968 didn't. But it is also that the attitude to actors has changed since that time, and that they're accorded more respect now and are treated more humanely. So a play is much more of a co-operative enterprise. NH We respected them a great deal more than they respected us. AB The thing I liked the most was that at my age, they still treated me like a human being. You don't normally expect that from young people. I have to say, though, that being treated like a human being meant that they took the piss out of me relentlessly. And never stopped.

There wasn't a honeymoon period when there was a bit of respect, not to say veneration. There was never any at all. The first day, when I was coming in to the theatre, Dominic Cooper, who plays Dakin, was lounging in the stage door and someone said "What are you doing here Dominic?" and he said "Oh, I'm in this crap play about history by – what's the guy's name? Oh hello, Alan." Question from the floor How does the rehearsal period develop? AB First of all we cut it quite a lot. After Hector has been given the sack at the end of the first act, I'd written a fairly ordinary classroom scene for the beginning of the second act and we found that wasn't taking the story any further. I then had to rewrite that scene so that you felt that it was progressing. Maybe a better dramatist than I am would have imagined that, but I didn't see it. NH One of the hazards of being a writer in the rehearsals is that the director and the actors can say, "This isn't working, Alan, can you rewrite it please?" Sometimes it's a good idea to stay home, which forces us to make what is written work.

But in fact it was wonderful to have the writer there. AB This sounds too cosy, but it requires forbearance, both on my part and on yours. Most directors would be nervous of having somebody there who chips in. It's only because we've worked together a lot that we don't mind. And if it's going the wrong way, I just keep quiet for a bit. When I think of some of the stuff I said at rehearsals, I go hot and cold at the foolishness of it. I made such stupid suggestions. But if you've worked together before, you don't mind. The thing that always impresses me is the courage of the actors. Before we actually started rehearsal, we had a read-through of the play in rough draft so that I could see how it did or didn't work, and then I could go back and do another draft. We had a scratch cast which included four of the actors who actually ended up in the play. They'd never seen the play before and couldn't pronounce a lot of the names – the ideas were totally new to them – and in any other circumstances would have been making utter fools of themselves. And yet they did it.

This is why I get so infuriated by "luvvies" as a term. Actors are brave creatures really: they don't mind making a fool of themselves. And they're making a fool of themselves on my behalf and I find that immensely heartening. Q How does the theme of sexuality fit in with the theme of knowledge? AB In the scene with the headmaster at the end of the first act, Hector doesn't really offer any defence for himself, except he starts saying, "The transmission of knowledge is in itself an erotic act. In the Renaissance…" and then the headmaster cuts him off. The phrase actually comes from George Steiner – I asked his permission to use it – and it comes from his latest book called Lessons of the Masters. Steiner talks about the whole question of sexuality and teaching, and though I'd written the play before I'd read it I was heartened that some of the things – for instance the notion that Irwin's teaching is sexualised by the pupil who actually takes it all on board – wasn't just an idea I'd had, but can occur as part of the nature of teaching.

I realise that Hector laying hands on the boys would be totally different if they were much younger, but these are all 17-, 18-year-olds. I think I've been criticised for not taking this seriously enough. I'm afraid I don't take that very seriously if they're 17 or 18, I think they are actually much wiser than Hector. Hector is the child, not them. Q Is one of the boys more you than any of the other boys? AB I was very religious as a boy and Nick assumed that I was Scripps, the religious one. But he's much more open-minded about it, more sceptical than I ever managed to be. So I suppose I'm closer to Posner. A few critics who've disliked the play have accused me of parading myself in Posner. But I don't know how else you write plays apart from putting yourself into the characters. I'm all the boys except for Dakin, the most confident boy. I wish I could, but I can't see myself in him. And the masters too. I think all dramatists work like that. There's a pinch of you in every character.

However, I am like Posner for a particular reason and it goes right back to the origin of the play. The idea really began when Nick told me about his time at Manchester Grammar School where he had a very good voice and sang with the Hallé Orchestra under Barbirolli. I always loved Barbirolli so that sounded to me wonderful. Nick was then on Private Passions, on Radio 3, and I listened to this thinking he would talk about his early experience with Barbirolli. In fact he didn't, but he did play Ella Fitzgerald singing Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered with the original Lorenz Hart lyrics of "I'll sing to him/Each spring to him/And worship the trousers that cling to him" and I thought how good this would be coming from a boy with a crush on another boy, sung by a boy with an unbroken voice. That took me back to my own childhood, because I was 16 when my voice broke. And so I started to write a play in which there was a boy with an unbroken voice who is longing for his voice to break, feeling quite out of it at school, very much as I did.

And then the final line of the play in an early draft was Posner saying, "It's not all bad news, my voice is breaking." We talked about this and Nick said well, nobody's voice breaks at 16 nowadays. NH Can I just say, that was one of the few times that we came close to a row, because Alan said you might just as well say that women don't burn their husbands' manuscripts and then go out and shoot themselves. And it doesn't invalidate Hedda Gabler. Which is true, I had to admit. AB He said I know somebody who has a good voice who would be good in this part but it would have to be a broken voice. So slightly reluctantly I rewrote the part. I can see Posner is a ghost of the part I would have written. Plays are full of ghosts like that, of ideas you've had and then changed, but it's seldom they turn out as happily as this one did. For publishers wishing to reproduce photographs on this page please phone 44 (0) 207 538 7505 or email syndicat@telegraph.co.uk 'The History Boys' by Alan Bennett is published this week by Faber.

The first 20 readers to order through Telegraph Books Direct will receive their copies absolutely free (allocated on a first come, first served basis). Thereafter it is available for £11.99 (usual price £12.99) + £2.25 p&p. To order please call 0870 155 7222 (Sat-Sun 9am-5pm; Mon-Fri 9am-7pm). The History Boys at Lyttelton, NT 2004 Review by: Alan Bird What a wonderfully warm and at times hilariously funny comic drama Alan Bennett has authored in his new play “The History Boys”. His subject is that theme so beloved of Thatcherism and New Labour, “Education, Education, Education” as Tony Blair annunciate in Labour’s 1997 election pledge. The story concerns a group of teenage boys who are being prepared for their Oxbridge entrance exam. The headmaster is obsessed with school league-table results, and wants his boys to go to Oxford. To that end he employs Oxford graduate Irwin to teach the boys how to succeed in their history exam.

However, not all the teachers share the headmaster’s functional approach to education. The ponderous and cordially eccentric teacher of ‘General Studies’ Hector, is far more interested in feeding the boys souls rather than filling them with empty facts. “Exams are the enemies of education” Hector proclaims, and he tells the boys that their A-level results are their “emblems of conformity”. What takes place is a clash of values between a functional, pragmatic approach to education and a more liberal romantic idealism. Irwin teaches a journalistic approach to passing exams: catchy headlines, pithy quotes and a subversion of the expected dull answer. Passing exams, according to Irwin, is all about being noticed. Hector teachers Larkin, Auden, Coward and just in case the boys become too earnest in their studies he also teaches them songs by George Formby and Gracie Fields! The boys’ love Hector and enjoy joining his conspiracy against all that is mediocre. Behind the safety of his locked classroom door they are allowed to act out scenes from old movies, such as Brief Encounter, or Seventh Veil, and serenade each other with renditions of “Bye Bye Black Bird”.

The headmaster however despises Hector, not because he doubts his ability to teach, but because it is impossible to measure or quantify his results. He bemoans the fact that the boys in Hector’s class know all the words to “When I’m Cleaning Windows”. The headmaster is therefore delighted to discover that Hector has been molesting the boys who he offers lifts home on his motorbike. Here is the headmaster’s perfect opportunity to dismiss Hector. Hector cannot see the harm in the special ‘Benediction’ that he offers to his boys. After all the boys do not object and are happy to take turns on the back of Hector’s bike. In deed some of the boys are jealous that Hector obviously does not think them interesting enough to warrant his attention. There are superb performances from the whole of the cast. However it is Richard Griffiths who shines as the jovial, unconventional Hector. Amongst the boys he appears as a rotund Peter Pan, playing games with his gang of lost boys whom he seeks to protect from the officious adult world of efficiency, where everything has to be counted, measured and quantified.

Griffiths incarnates Hector’s romantic idealism as he lovingly explains to one of the boys how literature is able to offer comfort in moments of melancholy; his large frame melts away to reveal the tender spirit it covers. Hector’s tears, when it looks as if is career is about come to a grubby end, are heart wrenching, and make you want to reach out and comfort this kind, if somewhat foolish, man. Stephen Campbell Moore’s Irwin looks every inch the ‘meretricious’ naive young man that Hector believes him to be. However, even he is influenced by Hector and the boys that he instructs, he discovers that the secret of being a good teacher is friendship. Later, when Irwin is a politician he declares with all the meretricious earnestness that we have come to expect of government ministers, “I am in government, not politics”, and goes on to explain that “the loss of liberty is the price we pay for freedom.” Frances de la Tour has only a supporting role as Mrs Lintott, a female history teacher, yet Bennett has provided her character with some memorable lines that have the audience rolling with laughter.

When the discussion moves to the question ‘What is history?’ she replies “masculine ineptitude” and goes on to thunder in an imperious voice “History is women following behind, with a bucket.” One would think that performing with such experience actors as Richard Griffiths and Frances de la Tour would intimidate the troop of young actors who play the boys, but far from it. Director Nicholas Hytner has enabled each boy to shine with heartfelt vigour. Especially worthy of mention is Dominic Cooper who plays Dakin, the handsome young boy who awakens so much sexual passion in others, and Samuel Barnett as Posner, the student who has falling hopelessly in love with Dakin. This is a loving heartfelt comedy that enchants as it entertains. What other critics had to say.....

PAUL TAYLOR for THE INDEPENDENT says, "The play is a delight." MICHAEL BILLINGTON for THE GUARDIAN says,"A superb, life-enhancing play." "NICHOLAS DE JONGH for THE EVENING STANDARD says, "Comic ramble fails to make the top grade." CHARLES SPENCER for THE DAILY TELEGRAPH says, "This is a wonderful evening, as heart-catching as it is hilarious." BENEDICT NIGHTINGALE for THE TIMES says, "Curious, questing, intelligent, witty and, at times, hilarious." ALASTAIR MACAULAY for THE FINANCIAL TIMES says, "Brilliantly funny, with lines that we will, I hope, quote for years and several show-stopping vignettes." External links to full reviews from popular press The History Boys Themes | GradeSaver The History Boys Themes Buy Study Guide The Purpose of Education The main theme of The History Boys is the purpose of education. Throughout the play, various characters question the best method for educating the titular boys. Hector and the Headmaster embody the two most extreme sides of the debate.

While the Headmaster believes that education is just the means to an end, the end being entrance to a top-tier university, Hector believes that education is the end in and of itself. Irwin and Mrs. Lintott fall more in the middle of the spectrum, though both are willing to do what is necessary to prepare the students for their examinations. Overall, Bennett presents a cynical view about the state of British education. Socioeconomic Inequality Bennett explores the theme of financial inequality in The History Boys by exposing the unfairness of private education. The playwright has openly said that inequities between public and private schools lead to disparities in university acceptances, which in turn effectively maintain an antiquated hierarchy in British society. The boys in the play are intelligent enough to succeed at Oxbridge (nearly all of them do), thanks to Mrs. Lintott's teachings. However, they require additional "polish" in order to bring them up to the same level as their private-schooled peers, who have been preparing for these examinations their whole lives. In this way, Bennett draws attention to the injustice of the system; wealthy students will always have the upper hand.

Hidden Sexuality Hidden sexuality bubbles beneath the surface of Act I and then becomes a focal point of Act II. At least four characters have homosexual inclinations, and three of them suffer from internal strife as a result. Though attitudes in England about homosexuality in the 1980s were much more progressive than in prior decades, it was a far-from-hospitable time for people who identified as being on the LGBTQ spectrum. Bennett presents the struggle to come to terms with one's sexuality from two different viewpoints. First, we see it from the perspective of teenage boys (primarily Posner ) at the dawn of their sexual desire, with all of the awkwardness that comes with adolescent yearning. The second experience is that of older men (Hector and Irwin) who have been conditioned by society to repress their natural inclinations. Hector is married to a woman and resorts to fondling his teenage students on motorcycle rides, while Irwin remains completely mum on the subject of his sexuality. Both men are therefore lonely.

History Alan Bennett has said that one of the reasons he wrote The History Boys is because he does not know if there is such a thing as absolute historical truth (Telegraph), and he explores this question through the different approaches of the boys' teachers. Mrs. Lintott's job is to give the boys as much straightforward historical fact as possible, and she does so as best she can. However, simply learning these facts is not enough to achieve Oxbridge glory, as Hector, Irwin, and the Headmaster repeatedly insist. Hector tries to teach the boys how to revere knowledge in hopes that it will help them succeed after they have left the bubble of academia. Irwin trains them how to detach themselves from history and present the facts in a new and exciting way, simply for the sake of attaining a desired result. Mrs. Lintott's traditional methods fail to give the boys the "polish" they need to get ahead, while Irwin's approach is ultimately more suited to a career as a journalist. As for Hector, he dies, which, as Rudge points out, allows history to safely patronize him.

Ultimately, Bennett does not present a concrete opinion about the existence of absolute truth - instead, the play concludes that despite the best-laid plans, "history is just one fucking thing after another." Gender Roles Bennett highlights the gender divide in his depiction of female characters in The History Boys. The men in the play all treat the women around them as subordinates. Fiona only exists in the words of Dakin and Mrs. Lintott - she never actually makes an appearance on stage. And even then, Dakin never speaks about her human attributes; he is only interested in having sex with her. Mrs. Lintott says that Hector has a wife, but she is unnamed and never appears; Hector himself never mentions her. The boys seem to only have the capacity to see women as sex objects, as evinced by their hapless staging of a scene in a French brothel. However, Mrs. Lintott does get one chance to tell the men around her what she thinks - that history consists of men who make terrible decisions while the women are left to pick up the pieces. Indeed, this proves to be the case of the women in The History Boys. All of the men move on in one way or another, leaving the women to clean up after them.

Mrs. Lintott retires, her contributions to the boys' success never truly celebrated. Fiona is never mentioned after the term ends. Hector's unnamed wife is left a widow after her husband dies in a motorcycle accident. Truth Most of the twists and turns in the plot of The History Boys have to do with the pursuit of truth or the revelation of a hidden truth. Dakin satisfies his infatuation with Irwin by trying to visit his professor's old haunts at Cambridge directory, only to find that Irwin has been lying about where he went to school. Hector appears to be a heterosexual married man, but then it comes out that he has been fondling his male students. Meanwhile, Mrs. Lintott and Rudge are the most reliable purveyors of truth in the play. Both of them know their places in society, whether they like it or not. Rudge refuses to allow Mrs. Lintott to gloss over his working-class background, while Mrs. Lintott points out how unfairly women are treated - both historically and in the present. These characters know that they cannot change certain truths, but they do not deny them. Knowledge There is a lot of discussion in the play about what knowledge is actually useful.

Hector believes that learning poetry "insulates" the students' minds. In an interview with Alan Bennett and Nicholas Hytner, the play's director, Hytner says, "Hector is the teacher who has no programme, who believes, to quote Housman, 'all knowledge is precious whether or not it serves the slightest human use' (Telegraph). As a result, Hector's lessons span from French language to poetry to English literature to old films. Irwin, however, only wants the students to prioritize knowledge that will be tangibly useful to them. Meanwhile, Mrs. Lintott simply wants to present the boys with facts and leave it to them to use this information as they will. The play ultimately does not endorse one viewpoint over another, as this is a complicated and age-old debate, especially when it comes to education. While at times, Bennett seems to favor Hector's approach, Hector clearly gets too invested in passing on knowledge for his own good (in the form of fondling the boys). Also, Rudge points out at the end of the play, Hector is out of touch with modern-day "poets" that will actually resonate emotionally with his students (like the Pet Shop Boys).

Rudge describes Gracie Fields as "[Hector's] crap," while he calls the Pet Shop Boys "our crap" (104). This shows that just because Hector does not revere their lyrics does not mean that they are invaluable to learn. The History Boys (2006) - IMDb IMDb There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. X Beta I'm Watching This! Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Error An unruly class of gifted and charming teenage boys are taught by two eccentric and innovative teachers, as their headmaster pushes for them all to get accepted into Oxford or Cambridge.

Director: From $2.99 (SD) on Amazon Video ON DISC a list of 32 titles created 25 Dec 2011 a list of 31 titles created 14 Jan 2012 a list of 22 titles created 28 Aug 2012 a list of 30 titles created 09 Aug 2013 a list of 30 titles created 24 Jul 2015 Title: The History Boys (2006) 6.9/10 Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. Nominated for 2 BAFTA Film Awards. Another 2 wins & 12 nominations. See more awards » Videos Edit Storyline In 1980s Britain, a group of young men at Cutlers' Grammar School all have the brains, and the will to earn the chance of getting accepted in the finest universities in the nation, Oxford and Cambridge. Despite the fine teaching by excellent professionals like Mrs Lintott in history and the intellectually enthusiastic Hector in General Studies, the Headmaster is not satisfied.

He signs on the young Irwin to polish the students' style to give them the best chance. In this mix of intellectualism and creative spirit that guides a rigorous preparation regime for that ultimate educational brass ring, the lives of the randy students and the ostensibly restrained faculty intertwine that would change their lives forever. Written by Kenneth Chisholm (kchishol@rogers.com) History. It's just one bloody thing after another. See more » Genres: Rated R for language and sexual content | See all certifications » Parents Guide: 22 December 2006 (USA) See more » Also Known As: £794,672 (UK) (13 October 2006) Gross: Did You Know? Trivia Samuel Barnett was nominated for the 2005 Tony Award (New York City) for Supporting or Features Actor in a Drama for "The History Boys" and recreated the role in this production.

See more » Goofs The lollipop lady that reports Hector to the headmaster carries a sign that carries the international symbol for children, which has only recently started replacing the old sign that stated "STOP CHILDREN" - which would have been the sign used in 1983. See more » Quotes [about telling his wife about the motorbike/boys] Hector : I'm not sure she'd be interested. See more » Crazy Credits At the beginning of the film, the title - "The History Boys" - is taken letter by letter from random parts of an essay on the dissolution of the monasteries, a common history topic, which the History Boys themselves write later on in the film. See more » Connections Papa's Got a Brand New Pigbag Written by Simon Underwood, Oliver Moore, James Johnstone, Andrew Carpenter, Christopher Hamlyn, Christopher Lee and Roger Freeman (c) Mistral Music Ltd / Warner/Chappell Music Ltd Performed by Pigbag Where We Go To School Does Not Determine What We Will Become 23 May 2007 | by jzappa (Cincinnati, OH, United States) – See all my reviews The History Boys is a very very challenging film for any audience.

One of these reasons is that it is driven by extremely eloquent conversations between younger and elder intellectuals, each conversation delving aggressively deep into the corners of conventional logic and subtexts and fleshing them out in what different characters arguably believe are the most truthful ways. Many characters are quite confident and extremely extroverted and the ones who are not so confident are defensively so. Alan Bennett's remarkably clear analysis of the human condition is intimidating. The other reason is because the story is one beyond social judgment. Perhaps this is purposeful because being written, produced, directed, and acted by English people, class-consciousness is surely existent among them. But that's what I love so much about this film. The audience, in order to understand and enjoy it, must release themselves from the scrutiny of general culture over many, mostly sexual, aspects of life. The film is not about homosexuality, but homosexual goings-on exist prevalently in the story. It's also treated very nonchalantly, and many straight boys are free of any personal sexual burdens that would inhibit them from partaking.

The very talked-about homosexual element of the film exists as the most direct example and also the core of the basis of the story, which is the pressure of society's judgmental and devastatingly interfering nature with many things that, if one were truly understanding, would not judge or interfere with. This extends to greater and more complex idealism in the script, such as the philosophy and meaning of education, the satisfactory or unsatisfactory pursuit and outcome of success, the importance of art and poetry, and the point of studying history. I believe that The History Boys is an extremely important movie, and the fact that it lasted for a single week at a small theater here in Cincinnati is despicable and glaringly, stupidly contradictory to its message. 55 of 82 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes BBC - GCSE Bitesize English Literature - Context : Revision The History Boys is a play written by Alan Bennett. It was first performed in 2004, at the National Theatre in London. It was also made into a successful film. Alan Bennett Alan Bennett was born in 1934. After attending a grammar school in Leeds he attended Oxford University – where he read History.

He is a well-known British writer. He wrote among other things the film The Madness of King George III, which he adapted from his own play. He is also well-known for his reading of Winnie the Pooh. Page Rivals for Young Hearts and Minds in Alan Bennett's 'History Boys' - The New York Times The New York Times Theater |Rivals for Young Hearts and Minds in Alan Bennett's 'History Boys' Search Continue reading the main story The seats in the Broadhurst Theater are no softer or wider than the ones in most Broadway houses, where the penalty for playgoing is almost always fanny fatigue. Yet for the entire, substantial length of the "The History Boys," the madly enjoyable play by Alan Bennett that opened last night, you somehow feel nestled in a plump armchair that has been custom made for your body -- a perch that you are reluctant to leave, even after more than two and a half hours of sitting. The components that induce such unexpected comfort are not ergonomic but theatrical, and of a seductive polish that New York audiences have seldom experienced of late.

Granted, the themes and situations of this comic drama, imported with its original cast from the National Theater in London, about a battle for the hearts and minds of schoolboys preparing for their university entrance exams are not of a kind to put American theatergoers at instant ease. This is a work in which the most likable and, by the play's standards, most moral figure is an obese English teacher who regularly swats his students in class and fiddles (to use the euphemism of choice) with the more attractive of them after school. The play's central theme is the essence of that looming abstraction, history, and how it should be taught. Specifically British educational terms, slang and place names abound, as do quotations from Auden, Larkin, Hardy and Shakespeare. Why, there's even a long classroom scene conducted entirely in French. Yet none of this is likely to occasion head-scratching for anyone who falls prey to the charm of "The History Boys," and that should be pretty much everyone. As staged by Nicholas Hytner, the artistic director of the National, this production moves with a breezy narrative swagger that transcends cultural barriers. Continue reading the main story Mr.

Bennett may have serious things on his mind, but he and Mr. Hytner take a cue from the classic entertainers of the music hall: variety and timing are what hold a restless audience's attention. Musical numbers, video sequences, scholarly debates, the acting-out of vintage movie scenes, moments of shocking emotional nakedness and wry internal monologues travel cheek by jowl here, with a cast in which every member stands out as an individual worthy of attention. Then there is the lure of Mr. Bennett's dialogue, as shimmering and warming as a fine Cognac. As befits a play about precocious, irreverent students -- a category to which the 71-year-old Mr. Bennett still seems, on some level, to belong -- "The History Boys" is a bright brooder with a strong streak of the showoff. Advertisement Continue reading the main story A beloved and ubiquitous figure in Britain, where playwrights enjoy a celebrity unknown to their American counterparts, Mr. Bennett has never developed an equivalent following stateside.

He is probably best known as a member of the pioneer satiric troupe Beyond the Fringe from the 1960's and more recently for his droll, sad "Talking Heads" monologues -- portraits of the Eleanor Rigbys of the world venting obsessions and grievances. Much of his work, including the sex farce "Habeas Corpus," a West End hit that sputtered on Broadway in 1975, has been perceived here as obstructively English, in the manner of culinary concoctions like toad-in-the-hole. "The History Boys" could well change that perception. Though its speech and immediate frame of reference are as local as ever, its appeal is far more elastic. There is, of course, the universally irresistible and frightening energy of adolescence, so expertly harnessed here. But the Western world has, for better or worse (and I know on which side Mr. Bennett would come down), become so much more homogeneous in the last several decades, with broad cultural concerns that translate into any language. The big issue in "The History Boys" is the emphasis on presentation over substance -- on the ascendancy of spin.

At the play's center are two schoolmasters at a grammar school in the mid-1980's (read: age of Thatcher) in Northern England. Hector (Richard Griffiths), a 60-ish man of expansive size and eccentricities, believes in learning for its own sake, a defense against man's inevitable solitude. The young, iconoclastic newcomer Irwin (Stephen Campbell Moore) -- brought in to coach the brightest of the students on how to impress the examiners at Oxford and Cambridge -- insists that in interpreting so-called facts, truth is beside the point. "History nowadays is not a matter of conviction," he says. "It's a performance." Guess which of these men winds up working in government? Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up Privacy Policy This opposition of sensibilities sets up the broad framework of "The History Boys." It also does not shy from embracing the conventional sentimentality of inspirational schoolteacher tales, sweet and somber, like "Goodbye, Mr.

Chips," "The Browning Version" and the film "Dead Poets' Society." And as the boys' intellectual allegiances shift from Hector to Irwin, Mr. Bennett doesn't avoid excessive thematic tidiness or heartstring-pulling. It's the idiosyncratic life that teems within this framework that makes "The History Boys" so captivating. This quirky, ineffably human vitality shows up most obviously in the classes presided over by Hector, where performing Rodgers and Hart and Piaf songs and improvising a rowdy dialogue in French set in a brothel are regular fare. But in these scenes, and in their mind-shaping counterparts led by Irwin, you're always aware of the complex emotional currents of doubt, perplexity and eroticism that throbs among practically everyone onstage. The actors playing the students are, to a boy, superb, though you are especially likely to remember Dominic Cooper (as the cocky school Lothario) and Samuel Barnett (who plays the sensitive misfit and who naturally has a devastating crush on Mr. Cooper's character).

Frances de la Tour, of the papyrus-dry delivery, is a withering joy as the most fact-bound of the teachers, even if the speeches Mr. Bennett has given her on the feminine perspective are a bit forced. As the narrow-minded, ambitious headmaster, Clive Merrison comes closest to caricature. But in the context of a world in which authority figures are dartboards, the exaggeration works. Mr. Griffiths and Mr. Campbell Moore brilliantly subvert the stereotypes their characters might fall into. They both affectingly channel the unease with life and essential loneliness that Mr. Bennett, in works from "Talking Heads" to "Single Spies" and "The Madness of George III," maps better than anyone these days. And each has a one-on-one scene with a student -- Mr. Griffiths with Mr. Barnett and Mr. Campbell Moore with Mr. Cooper -- that is as resonant with levels of meaning and ambivalence as anything Mr. Bennett has written. Designed by Bob Crowley, with lighting by Mark Henderson, the show's physical production matches the fluency of its dialogue. There's never a patch of dead air.

When you think about the show afterward, you may judge it occasionally guilty of some of the sins ascribed to Irwin, especially glibness at the expense of authenticity. Advertisement Continue reading the main story But while you are watching Mr. Bennett's boys of all ages, you're too enthralled to keep such critical notes in your head. That's because he so successfully adapts another dictum from Irwin. No matter what you do, Irwin counsels his exam-bound students, remember that history must be entertainment. Mr. Bennett, with less cynicism and more heart, applies the same rule to the teaching of history, with compellingly watchable results. The History Boys By Alan Bennett; directed by Nicholas Hytner; designer, Bob Crowley; lighting by Mark Henderson; music by Richard Sisson; video director, Ben Taylor; sound by Colin Pink; general management, 101 Productions Ltd.; production stage manager, Michael J. Passaro; technical supervisor, David Benken. The National Theater of Great Britain. Presented by Boyett Ostar Productions, Roger Berlind, Debra Black, Eric Falkenstein, Roy Furman, Jam Theatricals, Stephanie P.

McClelland, Judith Resnick, Scott Rudin, Jon Avnet/Ralph Guild and Dede Harris/Mort Swinsky. At the Broadhurst Theater, 235 West 44th Street, (212) 239-6200. Through Sept. 20. Running time: 2 hours 40 minutes. WITH: Sacha Dhawan (Akthar), Rudi Dharmalingam (Crowther), Dominic Cooper (Dakin), Andrew Knott (Lockwood), Samuel Barnett (Posner), Russell Tovey (Rudge), Jamie Parker (Scripps), James Corden (Timms), Clive Merrison (Headmaster), Frances de la Tour (Mrs. Lintott), Richard Griffiths (Hector), Stephen Campbell Moore (Irwin), Colin Haigh (TV Director) and Pamela Merrick (Makeup Lady).

Question: Who wrote the 2004 play ‘The History Boys’?
Answer: Alan Bennett