The History Boys: A Play

Front Cover
Macmillan, 2004 - Drama - 109 pages

"A play of depth as well as dazzle, intensely moving as well as thought-provoking and funny." —The Daily Telegraph

In The History Boys, Alan Bennett evokes the special period and place that the sixth form represents in an English boy's life. In doing so, he raises—with gentle wit and pitch-perfect command of character—not only universal questions about the nature of history and how it is taught but also questions about the purpose of education today.

An unruly bunch of bright, funny sixth-form (or senior) boys in a British boys' school are, as such boys will be, in pursuit of sex, sport, and a place at a good university, generally in that order. In all their efforts, they are helped and hindered, enlightened and bemused, by a maverick English teacher who seeks to broaden their horizons in sometimes undefined ways, and a young history teacher who questions the methods, as well as the aim, of their schooling.

Winner of six Tony Awards, The History Boys was also made into a movie of the same name in 2006.

 

Selected pages

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

About the author (2004)

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. The History Boys won numerous awards both at the National Theatre, London, and on Broadway. Also at the NT: The Habit of Art, People and Cocktail Sticks. He received an Academy Award nomination for his screenplay for The Madness of King George, and appeared with Dame Maggie Smith in a radio adaptation of his The Lady in the Van. His collection of prose Untold Storieswon the PEN/Ackerley Prize for autobiography. Fiction includes The Uncommon Reader and Smut: Two Unseemly Stories. His most recent publication is Six Poets: Hardy to Larkin.