The past is important
THE HISTORY BOYS By Alan Bennett
Alan Bennett's new play (at the Lyttleton Theatre) is about - to use Tony Blair's famous phrase - education, education, education. It is set in a northern grammar school in the 1980s. The headmaster (with a geography degree from Hull) is determined that his brightest boys should win places at Oxford or Cambridge.
The maverick sixth-form master, Hector, has a sparkling rapport with the boys, and his classes are eccentric, stimulating, eclectic, creative, poetic.
The head is concerned, however, that Hector's teaching is 'unpredictable and unquantifiable'. So, he hires for a few weeks a young teacher with the express brief to train the boys to write the kind of essays that will impress the examiners with their apparent originality.
