Download Educating The history boys

Fox Searchlight Pictures and DNA Films and BBC TWO Films present
In association with The UK Film Council
A National Theatre Production
THE HISTORY BOYS
Richard Griffiths
Frances de la Tour
Stephen Campbell Moore
Samuel Barnett
Dominic Cooper
James Corden
Jamie Parker
Russell Tovey
Samuel Anderson
Sacha Dhawan
Andrew Knott
Penelope Wilton
Adrian Scarborough
Georgia Taylor
and Clive Merrison
Directed by Nicholas Hytner
Based on the play by Alan Bennett
Written by Alan Bennett
Produced by
Kevin Loader
Nicholas Hytner
Damian Jones
Released: October 13
Running time: 112 minutes
Short synopsis
Eight bright, funny history students in the north of England in the mid 1980s are
pursuing an undergraduate place at the country's two finest universities. Their headmaster
is obsessed with breaking into the ranks of those schools that regularly send boys up to
Oxford and Cambridge and enlists Irwin, a shrewd newcomer, to coach the boys into
intellectual shape for the trials ahead. Seduced though they are by the exam-busting bag of
tricks offered by the temporary supply teacher, the boys are torn by their loyalty to the
hugely eccentric, poetry-spouting English master Hector and the regular diet of nourishing
facts and figures dispensed by Mrs Lintott, their history mistress. As they prepare for the
daunting admissions process, the journey of the History Boys becomes as much about how
education works as it is about where education leads.
Long synopsis
Akthar, Crowther, Dakin, Lockwood, Posner, Rudge, Scripps and Timms are the
'History Boys', the best and brightest at Cutler's Grammar School, chosen to pursue the
academic Holy Grail of a place at Oxford or Cambridge. Like most teenaged boys, they are
preoccupied with sport and sex but for the next term, their adolescent urges must be
shelved as they prepare for the gauntlet of written and oral examinations that will decide
their future.
The embers of the boys' ambitions are fanned into flame by a Headmaster who is
determined to usher them into the hallowed halls of Oxbridge not so much for their own
benefit as to earn himself a place in the league table and so, into the record books. His
students are not children of wealth and privilege and their academic achievements
represent a potential triumph for the school and by extension, himself. But his History Boys,
however bright they may be, lack 'flair'. Without consulting the other members of staff, the
Headmaster hires Irwin, recently arrived from Oxford, to whip the boys into shape for their
entrance exams and ensure that Cutler's Grammar does not miss this opportunity for glory.
Irwin's arrival and with it, an aggressive academic ethos that favours spin and
winning over traditional scholarship and learning, immediately creates unease in the
staffroom. Hector, the English teacher appointed to coach the boys in General Studies, is
dealt the hardest blow. A maverick instructor whose methods range from the mildly
eccentric to the downright scandalous, Hector is indulged by the boys. His flights of fancy
and wandering hands are regarded by his students as harmless. Although they tease him
mercilessly and can't say precisely what he is teaching in his scattershot way, the boys like
Hector and sense that they are learning from him.
Hector's ally is Mrs Lintott. Her history classes are old-fashioned, and by-the-book,
packed with names and dates that the boys must know by heart in order to pass tests.
Lintott knows that her methods are dull but she believes them to be sound and the boys
respect her authority.
Irwin immediately nails his colours to the mast, taking the History Boys out of their
Physical Education class and away from their Bible-quoting PE instructor to deliver a
lecture about their infinitesimal chances of getting into to the top universities if they don't
learn a few tricks. The boys file out of this first lesson muttering about the new teacher but
he has struck a nerve and by the second class, they are listening intently as Irwin instructs
them to jettison the facts in favour of arguments that will dazzle the eye of a jaded
examiner.
Dakin is troubled by Irwin's classes and frustrated in his efforts to win the new
teacher's approval. A good-looking boy with the primal instinct to seduce anything that
crosses his path (including the Headmaster's secretary, Fiona) Dakin suspects that his
charms are lost on Irwin in a way they are not lost on others - Hector, for example, or
Dakin's classmate Posner who worships him from afar (the youngest boy and a
late-developer, Posner nevertheless has a precocious understanding of his place in the
universe).
Irwin is intrigued by the boys' ability to call on vaguely apposite morsels of poetry for
every occasion ('gobbets' as he calls them) and while they initially echo Hector, protesting
that a poem has no purpose, they soon come around to Irwin's goal-oriented way of
thinking. The shift in their loyalties is demonstrated on a class outing to an ancient abbey
when the boys follow their young master through the ruins, leaving Hector and Mrs Lintott
behind.
Although Hector's groping while giving them a lift on the motorbike is tolerated by
the boys (they are old enough to know to block his advances with a well-placed book),
when he is spotted by a lollipop lady and reported to the Headmaster, Hector's fate is
sealed. He is advised that he will not be returning for another term and furthermore, that
half of his classes will now be turned over to Irwin.
Hector doesn't rise to his own defence except to suggest that the transmission of
knowledge is in itself an erotic act. This is rejected outright by the Headmaster and a
deflated Hector returns to his classroom. Posner is there, waiting for a lesson. Hector
expertly leads the boy through a poignant recitation of Hardy's poem, Drummer Hodge.
Mrs Lintott petitions the Headmaster to let Hector work out his time but she leaves
without further argument upon learning the charges against him. Dakin and Scripps also
discuss Hector's dismissal which Dakin has, of course, learned of from his girlfriend, the
Headmaster's secretary.
The day of reckoning draws closer. The boys rehearse their interviews with Lintott,
Irwin and Hector standing in as examiners. Hector is shouted down when he suggests that
the students should just try telling the truth. It falls to Rudge, a talented rugby player widely
assumed to be the boy least likely to succeed, to sum up what they have learned in the
preceding months of feverish study.
Having established (through a discussion about the life and works of WH Auden)
that Irwin might be susceptible to his charms after all, Dakin waits for him in the schoolyard.
Irwin, however, is clever enough to turn the attempted seduction into a history lesson and
Dakin is overjoyed when the new teacher seems impressed with his "subjunctive"
interpretation of historical events.
The boys head off to their interviews at Oxford and Cambridge. Hector, Lintott and
Irwin wave them goodbye and remain behind for meetings with the Headmaster in which
Hector's future is revealed.
The boys marvel at the opulence of the campus and college buildings. Dakin stops
in to see the porter at the college Irwin attended and is surprised to learn there is no record
of Irwin's name. Rudge finds his own name rings a bell with a member of the board of
examiners.
At last, the envelopes arrive, announcing what fate lies in store for the eight star
students of Cutler's Grammar School. The results are a triumph for the Headmaster and a
vindication of Irwin's teaching methods.
Returning to school, Dakin again corners Irwin, this time knowing he has the upper
hand. Irwin tells the truth about his 'time' at Oxford. In a spirit of
gratitude and fellowship (and using a part of speech that would please Hector) Dakin
suggests that Irwin might like to perform fellatio on him. A rendezvous is fixed for the
following Sunday. When Dakin later recounts the episode to Scripps, the churchgoing
Scripps is dubious. Although he admires Dakin's élan, Scripps thinks that a magazine
subscription or a box of chocolates would be a more appropriate 'thank you' for a favourite
teacher.
Scripps is even more intrigued as he follows Dakin to the office where Dakin quizzes
the Headmaster in matters of moral relativism. Is a teacher who attempts to feel up a boy
on a motorbike really any worse than a headmaster who attempts to feel up his secretary,
Dakin wonders? Invoking the dismissal of Cardinal Wolsey to lend historical weight to his
argument, Dakin is chased out of the Headmaster's office but very soon, Hector is
reinstated.
The celebration will be short-lived: although his passenger will recover, Hector will
not survive his last journey on the motorbike. The boys will go on with their studies and
from there, most of them will go on to other things. Irwin will find an ideal medium for his
brand of scholarship.
'History', as Rudge would say, is 'just one fucking thing after another'.
About the production
Introduction
Like their first film collaboration, the Oscar-nominated, BAFTA-winning feature The
Madness of King George, director Nicholas Hytner's and screenwriter Alan Bennett's THE
HISTORY BOYS began life at London's National Theatre where Hytner is Artistic Director.
THE HISTORY BOYS opened in May of 2004 and following a sold-out run, went on to win
numerous prizes including Laurence Olivier Awards for Best New Play (Alan Bennett), Best
Director (Nicholas Hytner) and Best Actor (Richard Griffiths), as well as the Evening
Standard and Critics' Circle Awards for Best Play.
After a hugely successful regional and world tour, in April 2005, THE HISTORY
BOYS took Broadway by storm, selling out performances and sweeping a grand total of six
Tony Awards including Best Play, Best Director, Best Actor (Richard Griffiths), and Best
Supporting Actress (Frances de la Tour).
As in the original National Theatre production, the film's cast is led by Richard
Griffiths, Clive Merrison, Frances de la Tour, and Stephen Campbell Moore, with Sacha
Dhawan, Samuel Anderson, Dominic Cooper, Andrew Knott, Samuel Barnett, Russell
Tovey, Jamie Parker and James Corden reprising their roles as the boys. New characters
in Alan Bennett's film adaptation are Penelope Wilton as the art teacher Mrs Bibby, Adrian
Scarborough as the Physical Education teacher Mr Wilkes, and Georgia Taylor as Fiona,
the Headmaster's alluring secretary.
Shot over a period of six weeks on location in England in Watford and Yorkshire,
THE HISTORY BOYS is produced by Kevin Loader, Nicholas Hytner and Damian Jones,
financed by DNA Films and BBC Films and distributed by Fox Searchlight.
Education, education, education
"It was a shock to me as a schoolboy to find the teachers were actually human
beings," says writer Alan Bennett.
Like the History Boys, Bennett attended a state school (Leeds Modern) in the North
of England and was put forward for Oxford and Cambridge by an ambitious headmaster.
Unlike the History Boys, he was not prepared for the entrance exams by a charismatic,
inspirational teacher such as Hector or groomed by a flashy young scholar like Irwin.
"My own teacher at the state school I went to was more like Mrs Lintott," says
Bennett. "He was a good teacher and a decent man but he just taught you facts, facts,
facts. The notion of a journalistic approach to answering a question or of turning the
question on its head, or doing it in an eye-catching way would have been totally foreign to
him. He wouldn't really have known how or where to start with that. Nobody really gave us
any guidance as to what to do so we had to find our own way. And that's partly what the
story's about."
In the absence of any instruction in the art of passing exams, Bennett taught himself
to clear the academic hurdles. In his foreword to the published play, the author describes
how he 'cheated' to get a scholarship to Oxford: "I reduced everything I knew to a set of
notes with answers to possible questions and odd, eye-catching quotations all written out
on a series of forty or fifty correspondence cards, a handful of which I carried in my pocket
everywhere I went." These 'minced morsels' were duly regurgitated for his General Paper
and Bennett won his scholarship.
Preparing for his final examinations in History at Oxford, Bennett discovered another
technique, that of taking an idea and turning it on its head in order to grab attention. Again,
his methods paid off and Bennett was awarded a First. "In a sense," he says, "I am Irwin".
Having studied under a Mrs Lintott and having only later discovered the Irwin
technique on his own in order to excel at exams, Bennett recalls being bored at school,
never certain what the point of it was or what it had to do with him. Arriving at university, he
met students (mostly from fee-paying schools) who spoke with great affection of eccentric,
impassioned teachers who inspired their pupils with an equal passion for learning but he
had never personally encountered one.
"If I had had somebody who could enthuse me as obviously Hector could, then I
would have seen the point of it more," Bennett says. "There are people who do that but I
only ever met one throughout the whole of my schooling. Right at the end of my time at
Oxford, I had a supervisor who taught medieval history and he made medieval history
seem the one thing in the world that was worth doing. Medieval history is, to say the least,
a very marginal subject but he made it seem as if that and that alone was the thing worth
living for. There are teachers like that still, they survive even in the terrible conditions of
teaching today but I never had one when I was a boy and I suppose that's why I tried to
write one."
The History Boys is about the nature and purpose of education, the use of literature,
how we teach and how we are taught. It manages to be raucously funny while addressing
the very serious business of the passing on of wisdom to the next generation.
Although not explicitly so, it is also a political piece because, according to Bennett:
"It's about education which is a central question in politics". In addition, because Bennett is
a master observer and an accomplished miniaturist, THE HISTORY BOYS' classroom can
be seen not only as a microcosm of its educational system but also a metaphor for the
state of the nation itself. Bennett set his story in the early 1980s partly for practical reasons
(the 'seventh term' Oxbridge exams were abolished thereafter) but chiefly for thematic ones
(during the Thatcherite 80s, the struggle between humanist and utilitarian approaches to
education came to a head).
"These days, an off-curriculum, off-piste teacher like Hector within the state school
system is no longer conceivable," says director Nicholas Hytner. "My education at
Manchester Grammar School was almost identical to the education that these boys had. I
think my teachers were less overtly cynical than Irwin but I went to school in the 70s and
Irwin is very much a product of the 80s. Irwin's denial that there is such a thing as objective
truth, his swashbuckling relativism, is a more recent phenomenon but my teachers,
enthusiastic though they were for their subjects, were still anxious that we should do well."
Both Bennett and Hytner sat the 'seventh term' Oxbridge entrance exams, some 25
years apart, Bennett in History and Hytner in English. "I was part of a group of about eight
or 10 kids trying to get into Oxford and Cambridge to read English," says Hytner. "In the
next-door classroom, there were eight or 10 kids trying to get in to read history."
Producer Kevin Loader was also a state school boy who sat the seventh term
Oxbridge exam and like Alan Bennett, went on to teach university undergraduates for a
time. "The scary thing about the Cambridge entrance exams was a thing called the
'General Studies Paper'," he recalls. "As Hector says, there's no such thing as general
studies; it's a complete waste of time. But actually, General Studies was completely
terrifying because you would sit this essay exam where you were asked to write about very
generalized things for which you could do no revision. It was all about how you thought,
how you used your knowledge; it wasn't necessarily about what you knew. Clearly, that's
one of the things Alan explores in THE HISTORY BOYS, whether education is about
marshalling facts in an interesting way rather than just learning them."
"I felt my education only began after I'd left school, after I'd left university," Bennett
says. "I mean, even in an absolutely practical way. I don't, for instance, remember reading
a book through from start to finish until a fair time after I'd left university, when we went to
New York with BEYOND THE FRINGE which was in 1962. Coming back on the boat, I
read, 'Bleak House' or 'Great Expectations'. That was the first time I'd read a book from
start to finish and I kept thinking as I was reading, 'Oh, I'm enjoying this, and yet it's a
classic'. I'd somehow thought of the classics of literature as something apart from me,
something to do with academic life and not something you enjoyed. It took me a long, long
time to learn something you really ought to learn at school but not many people do."
Richard Griffiths who plays the charismatic 'General Studies' teacher, Hector,
agrees. "Most people in this country who go to university are not going there to learn
anything. They go in order to finish growing up. Usually, it's the first time in their lives that
they've been away from home. They are 18, everything works, they're lusty and full of juice.
They go to university and for three years, the parents don't quite know what they are doing
and the teachers don't quite seem to care. When I went to university, I just mainly had a
ball. I studied like crazy for ten minutes to pass the exams and the rest of it was just
goofing around doing plays and trying to get laid."
"As far as the film's treatment of education goes," says Nicholas Hytner, "Embodied
in it are people for whom education is simply about results. At the very extreme level, the
Headmaster is interested in meeting and exceeding targets. Then there's Irwin who keeps
the boys riveted by his inventiveness and his freedom from the constraints of traditional
historical truth. He's also concerned with getting them where they want to be and that's no
bad thing. Hector, on the other hand, says he has no concern for getting them where they
want to be. He uses his classroom as a place where their minds can be opened and their
spirits touched by the poetry which resonates with him, even though sometimes he can't
say why. That's great, but it also has its drawbacks. I think there is a place in the classroom
for asking exactly why a poem is touching, and exactly how it does what it does. I think it
could be said that it's sentimental nonsense merely to allow a poem to enter at some
subliminal level and resonate."
Bennett concedes that although he is temperamentally attracted to the sort of
teaching represented by Hector, it isn't particularly practical and probably wouldn't help a
student to pass a test, a theory borne out by the academic career of producer Damian
Jones who attended a fee-paying school: "I think I had the imagination and the ability to
embrace the education for life. It was the education to pass exams that I had trouble with,"
he says ruefully. "I probably needed an Irwin but unfortunately or fortunately, I had more
Hectors…"
"It's certainly true today, even more than it was when I was at school, that there just
isn't time to read a book from start to finish," says Alan Bennett. "As one of the boys says in
our film, you just have to get 'the gist of it'. 'Give us the gist of it! That's all we want. Just for
the exam!' That's what exams are about - getting away with it. Hector's notion that literature
is wonderful and has to do with your life and can show you things that you'll get nowhere
else - that didn't come to me until long after I'd left university."
When asked why he chose to give Hector the 'tragic flaw' of his attraction to his
pupils, Bennett replies: "It seemed true to his character, really. It seemed right and in a
way, it made him an innocent. The boys in the story are 18 and I think they are actually
much wiser than Hector. Their attitude to him is one of weary tolerance - this entirely
ineffectual groping they get on the back of his motorbike doesn't alarm them or seem to
damage them - they just are bored with it. At the same time - and this may be a romantic
notion - they like him so they don't shop him. They just put up with it and think it's one of
the facts of life. I don't think that's necessarily so far from the truth."
"There's a huge amount that's attractive about the way Hector teaches," says
Nicholas Hytner. "At an emotional level, it's very easy to respond to him and it's harder to
respond to Irwin, or to Mrs Lintott. But the film is by no means an unequivocal endorsement
of Hector's approach. It's a debate that doesn't have a clear conclusion - it doesn't even
ask the audience to come to a conclusion. But it does ask the audience to think quite
deeply about what it's discussing."
Educating The history boys
"From the moment we started at the National Theatre, we went into what felt like a
classroom," says Dominic Cooper who plays Dakin, in some respects the most worldly of
the History Boys and coincidentally, the character Alan Bennett suggests bears the least
resemblance to himself. "It was a huge lesson on lots of things that we, as actors,
unfortunately hadn't learnt in school. Our education let us down in some ways but from the
moment we started rehearsals, we were learning what these characters know inside out."
When Alan Bennett first delivered his script to Nicholas Hytner, although certain
characters were developed (Dakin, Posner and Scripps) the other History Boys' dialogue
was attributed to 'Boy 1', 'Boy 2' and so on. Their characters developed based on the
extensive rehearsal process and in particular, in the ersatz classroom established at the
National to give the young actors the education they needed to become fluent in the
language and references of the play. The classroom/rehearsal room also enabled the cast
to develop the camaraderie, casual intimacy, and playful antagonism of students who
spend all day, every day together.
"The play is full of literary references which an average schoolboy would not know
now," says Bennett. "It's full of references to literary figures, poets and novelists and so on,
figures of English culture from the last 200 years or so. The actors needed to know about
these if only in order to play boys who did know about them. Nicholas Hytner and I almost
conducted tutorials about the subjects that occur in the play. I know actors and they don't
like a lot of talking before you start rehearsal, they like to get started. But in this case, I
think it was essential and it had another function in the sense that they got to know one
another and they became a class. You picked out the ones who were quieter than the
others and the ones who were more self-assertive. This was really beneficial to the play as
a whole."
"I learned so many names and not just the names but what they were responsible
for," says Samuel Anderson who plays Crowther. "We touched on World War I in school
when I was about 13 or 14 and I remembered the outcome but I didn't really remember
how it started so it was brilliant to get all that back again. We also had a morning of poetry
reading when we started rehearsals for the play. I hadn't done anything like that since
school and back then it was crap, the teachers just depressed you with it. But hearing great
actors delivering poetry, I thought, "Oh, that's what they meant!'"
"The first stages of rehearsal at the National were like school and I absolutely loved
being a teacher," says Hytner. "I had no idea what Alan was writing about before the play
arrived. I never do. This is the fourth of his plays that I've directed - our working relationship
goes back now to 1989 - but I never know what he's up to. When this arrived, it felt like my
schooldays. It was an amalgam of his schooldays back in the 70s, mine in the 70s, and the
school- days of the boys that it's written about in the 80s. But what they're talking about,
the lessons they're taught, are obviously what Alan knows and is passionate about, and
that happened to be true for me as well. Being able to teach Hardy, Larkin, Eliot and Auden
(poets that, it has to be said, Alan has taught to the nation through his Channel 4 TV
shows) was a taste of a career I'd love to have had. What I do and what teachers do very
often overlaps, but never so explicitly as in this rehearsal period. It was great to be able to
take a group of kids through what I'd been taught and enjoyed."
The rehearsal process enabled Alan Bennett to fill in some of the 'caricatures' he
had sketched, using elements of the actors' personalities to inform the characters as they
developed. He also used the young actors as barometers of the 'modernity' of the dialogue.
"I don't know that I understand boys now," says Bennett. "Things have changed so
much. But the boys in the play are from the same social level as I was from. I didn't try to
write like the 80s as it were, in a self-consciously modern way. I just wrote true to the
character of the boys and trusted that if anything sounded old-fashioned or over-literary,
then the actors would smooth it out themselves - which they did. You also learnt what sort
of characters they were. For instance, James Corden is very funny and so you found
yourself writing funnier lines simply for the pleasure of hearing him do them."
"Without question, Timms is the closest character that I've played to myself in
anything I've done," says James Corden, the self-confessed class clown. "Alan has taken
parts of Andy and added them to Lockwood, taken parts of Sam and added them to
Crowther and so on. The script has influenced us in how we behave and I think we've
influenced Alan in the way he wrote the characters. Any of the boys can go, 'Alan, do you
think this is a better line?' to Alan Bennett! This is one of the greatest living playwrights and
here's these young whippersnappers going, 'I've got a better idea, I think'. And sometimes
Alan says, 'Yeah, that is better'. Amazing!"
"It was almost by chance that we got a cast in which each person is very different,
each person has a very strong character," says Bennett. "We weren't particularly striving
for that but we just got a cast in which everybody could do it. Normally there's a weak link,
somebody who is not as good as the others and has to be helped along. But here, they
were all competent, they all got along, they knew what they could do. I remember when
Sacha Dhawan who plays Ahktar and Andrew Knott who plays Lockwood came down to
audition on the train from Manchester. They were really wired and on edge somehow and,
of course, you realised it meant an enormous amount to them that they got the part. They
both read well but then Sacha, at the end of the audition, asked if he could read a poem he'd written this poem about the play. And I think it was probably that that got him the part.
I mean, not specifically, as he is a very good actor but he was just so keen to get it that you
hadn't the heart to refuse him, really. Of course, I probably identified with that since I'm
from the North and Sacha and Andrew obviously thought coming to London was a big
deal."
"Because I'm from Manchester, the whole London scene and working at the
National Theatre was a huge thing for me," says Sacha Dhawan. "And so was working with
Alan Bennett because he was a writer I studied for my final exams! What's great about
Alan is you'd think he was in rehearsals because he wanted the play to be done a certain
way, staged in a certain way, but in reality he was there for our benefit, to make sure that
we understood what we were saying."
Although, at least in the abstract, all of the History Boys confess to being in awe of
Alan Bennett and his work, they very quickly lost any of the shyness they may initially have
felt in the presence of the man they nicknamed 'AB'. Bennett recalls that the young actors'
admiration for his work never extended to treating him with the deference normally
accorded to people his of age and reputation. Instead, the author cheerily admits that from
the outset, "they took the piss out of me relentlessly".
"There wasn't a honeymoon period when there was a bit of respect, not to say
veneration," Bennett says. "There was never any at all. The first day, when I was coming in
to the theatre, Dominic Cooper 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.'"
There are, of course, plenty of precedents for the actors' irreverence toward their
elders in Bennett's script which, as producer Kevin Loader explains, is in keeping with his
own experience as a seventh term student: "I think one of the things that Alan's captured
very well is this strange zone that these boys are in between taking their last state school
exams - their A-levels - and doing their Oxbridge entrance exams. You have this
intermediate status where you are still a schoolboy, but you're almost an undergraduate
student and you're staying on at school in a voluntary way. I remember that your
relationship with the staff does change so that some of the backchat, the wit and the hard
time the boys give their teachers seems to me completely appropriate to that moment in
the madness of their education."
Loader also describes the social commentary implicit in the boys' attitude toward
those in authority: "As with much of Alan's work, there is a class comedy about people from
unlikely backgrounds trying to break through, to do things their parents would not have
done. So what you've got here is a group of schoolboys, quite possibly none of whose
parents had gone to university, trying to get into the top two schools in the country. There's
a feistiness about them which is entirely appropriate to that moment in social history."
As for their 'roles' as teachers and whether he and Bennett were preparing the boys
to pass a test or preparing them for life, Hytner says, "There is always an end in sight to
education. The end in sight, as far as we were concerned was the opening night of a play. I
hope Alan and I provided a little bit of Hector, but I possibly provided more of Irwin because
I was the one who was responsible for getting everything up and running."
"You realise how little you appreciated being educated when there are two people,
Nick Hytner and Alan Bennett, who have this wealth of information without referring to any
book; they just know the answers to all the questions you come out with," says Cooper.
"Many of the references to poetry in the script, Alan knows off the top of his head. We
didn't know any of them and I began to realise that I should have appreciated that time
more, when people were doing that for me for free in school and I was not paying any
attention whatsoever."
"The great thing about actors is they never stop learning," says Hytner. "I think the
vast majority of university graduates, once they're through at university, just stop - they
stop reading, they stop finding out, they lose their interest in their subject. Actors never lose
their curiosity. They love taking on new experiences, new lives - you know how boring it is,
listening to the ones who have been through boot camp for an army movie telling you
about how amazing boot camp was with that kind of blithe and attractive innocence as if
nobody - not even the army! - has ever gone through boot camp before. Well, my lot went
through A-level English and A-level history. Less glamorous and physically less taxing, but
much more fun, I suspect."
Stage to screen
"The play was rehearsed in depth when we first staged it and not much more than a
year later, we made the film," says Nicholas Hytner. "In my experience, films can take
years and years and years and sometimes, by the time they get made all passion is spent.
But I think that Alan wrote the play quickly, in a flash of inspiration, and it's a play that we
never lost our enthusiasm for. In the process of translating it from the stage to film - of
rethinking how to tell the story, re-conceiving it, re-visualizing it - there was never any
slackening of momentum."
Although Hytner and Bennett decided early on to make a film of THE HISTORY
BOYS, they didn't reveal their intentions or actively seek the involvement of other parties
until they had a finished screenplay, budget, and schedule. They knew that they would
have a window of opportunity prior to the world tour of the play and during the English
school holidays that would enable them to shoot in an actual school closed for the summer.
Most importantly, they knew that whoever they made the film with would have to agree to
make the film of the National Theatre production.
"It doesn't happen very often that a play is cast perfectly in every respect," says
Hytner. "When that does happen, material which is already rich and resonant simply
becomes richer. The combination of the parts as written on the page and what is recreated
every night by imaginative actors getting right under the skin of what they're doing keeps it
more than alive. There was no way we were going make this without the cast that we'd
been working with for the previous 12 months."
Kevin Loader and Damian Jones were approached to produce the film that Hytner
and Bennett wanted to make. "What we brought to the party was a knowledge of how to
make this film for a small budget and give them the kind of absolute creative freedom that
they wanted," says Loader.
"Kevin and Damian very skilfully put together a financial package and those who got
involved - BBC Films, DNA and Fox Searchlight - were 100% supportive of the notion that
we would continue down the road that we had already set out on," says Hytner.
Hytner and Bennett had previously and very successfully made the transition from
stage to screen for their Oscar and BAFTA winning production of The Madness of King
George which also began life at the National Theatre. However, Hector's 20th century
English classroom demanded a different approach to the 18th century English court of
George III.
"When we made The Madness of King George, the film was a response to what the
play referred to," says Hytner. "The final scene took place outside Saint Paul's Cathedral in
April of 1789 at the service of Thanksgiving for the King's restoration to health. Now, on
stage you can suggest that with a flight of steps and a way with a hat. But film is an
unashamedly literal medium. Although you always hope that the literal image will have
some resonance beyond itself, on film, St. Paul's Cathedral is St. Paul's Cathedral.
On The Madness of King George, which was my first film, I learned that film also
offers the opportunity for a degree of interiority that you can rarely if ever get on the stage.
The world of THE HISTORY BOYS is an enclosed one and historically, film has always
done very well in enclosed worlds like prisons, hospitals, army bases, and schools. We
very rarely travel outside the school in our film because what we're really interested in is
the world inside the characters: their desires, their aspirations, their frustrations, their
ideas."
"I just cut out bits that I didn't think were appropriate or which wouldn't work and Nick
cut out more," says Alan Bennett. "I then put in the extra bits I felt we needed to fill out the
canvas - I wrote in a few characters simply because you needed to see the headmaster
knocking about and you needed to see people in the staffroom scenes. I wrote a brief
scene (though she makes it a very good one) in the art department with Penelope Wilton
as the art mistress. And I added a terribly religious PE instructor played by Adrian
Scarborough who's slightly drawn from somebody who was at school in my time. I never
liked PE at all, so I was probably biased…"
"Alan understood instinctively that there wasn't much point in opening out THE
HISTORY BOYS, to start cutting up something that was working so brilliantly for audiences
at the National in pursuit of some bogus cinematic quality," says Kevin Loader. "The
transition from stage to screen in this case is that the film makes you feel closer to these
characters; it makes you more involved with their emotional stories and gives you the
chance to exploit the amazing detail of these performances to the hilt."
"You trusted Richard Griffiths and Frances de la Tour and the boys individually to
tell the story, really," says Bennett. "You didn't want to take it apart or expand it in a way
which would dilute it. You get glimpses of the boys' parents very occasionally but if you'd
shown them at home or filmed their lives, it wouldn't have helped. It's not about that. It's
about what they're doing in the classroom and their parents are incidental to that in the way
that we tell the story."
"For me it was wonderfully exciting to try and make a film out of very bright people
who spark ideas off each other, who riff off each other intellectually, trying to outsmart each
other with great wit and joie de vivre but with an underlying seriousness," says Hytner. "We
tried to reflect that in the way we shot it and in the way we cut it. But we also tried to reflect
that by sometimes being as still as it's possible to be, as static as you dare to be in a film.
I'm thinking particularly of the scene where Hector and Posner discuss 'Drummer Hodge'
together and unpeel their hearts, revealing themselves obliquely through discussing
something else, in this case a poem by Thomas Hardy. It's more or less exactly the same
scene on stage and screen, barely cut at all. The difference is that every night on stage,
they included 1,000 people in a very intimate conversation."
Two locations were found for the world of the History Boys, with Watford Girls
Grammar School and Watford Boys Grammar School in a London suburb standing in for
Cutler's Grammar School in Sheffield. The producers' vague concerns that the cast might
not as easily pass for schoolboys on screen as they had on stage were put to rest on the
day when a group of the actors played a game of football during a break in filming at
Watford Boys Grammar. "Summer school was in session across the way and a strident
teacher's voice called to the cast members from a nearby window: Put that ball away and
get back to class immediately!" recalls Damian Jones.
Among the actors, both the film debutants and the old hands recognised the benefit
of the extended rehearsal period provided by the actual rehearsals and the sold-out run at
the National Theatre. "It's a wonderful luxury just to be able to rattle off the dialogue without
thinking what comes next," says Richard Griffiths. "The difference between film and the
stage is essentially one of scale and everybody's had to scale down what they do to do
smaller, more intense versions of it because the camera sees everything and mustn't be
yelled at or abused or have its intelligence taken for granted."
"It was so much more relaxed because 90% of making a film seems to be getting to
know the other actors," says Stephen Campbell Moore who plays the new-model teacher,
Irwin. "We obviously toned down things that were very theatrical even on stage but we
know it back to front. You don't have to worry whether you are in character or not because
over a period of a year and a half, it kind of takes you over. You never have to think,
'Would Irwin speak like this or do this or walk like this?' because you have been doing it for
so long you'll be lucky if you don't stay like that for the rest of your life."
Samuel Barnett who plays the lovelorn Posner agrees: "I sometimes think I'll never
play anything else. It's just been mammoth, doing the play at the National Theatre, then
making the film, then a regional tour and back to the National before the world tour and
Broadway…three years of my life playing Posner. It's amazing to be able to go into such
depth with a character, a real gift."
The holy grail
To this day, Alan Bennett recalls going to Cambridge to take the entrance exam
more than 50 years ago: "It was almost the first time I'd ever been away from home. It
happened to be in December and it was very, very cold; there was a hard frost over
everything. Cambridge is a beautiful place at the best of times but then, it just looked
wonderful. I came from Leeds which was as black as Cambridge was white in the sense
that Leeds was covered in soot and smoke - an industrial city - whereas Cambridge was
like a wedding cake, so white and icy and wonderful."
Bennett is quick to add, however, that this first impression was the lasting one and
he has no particular nostalgia for his student days. He has said that he only began to feel
any genuine 'intellectual stirrings' while in the army doing his National Service at the Joint
Services School for Linguists and believes that his real education began some years after
that. These sentiments are echoed by Bennett's fellow Oxbridge graduates and
collaborators on The History Boys.
"Who we are, what we become, is the consequence of so many different
influences," says Nicholas Hytner. "Sure, our education has a lot to do with it but much less
than we're encouraged to believe when we're chasing those results, when we're chasing
university entrance. It was the most important thing in the world to me that I got into
Cambridge. I got in, I loved it. Since I've left, nobody's ever asked me where I went to
school. The voices of Mrs Lintott and Hector are both very strong in the script, suggesting
that it really doesn't matter one way or the other. In no sense does the film believe, or do
any of them at the end of the film believe, that those two universities are the be all and end
all. They aren't. But the boys are told it matters and so they chase it."
"You probably do go up thinking that your university years are going to control and
shape your life but then you realise the minute you leave that actually, of course they
aren't," says Kevin Loader. "Your life is about what happens after that."
"I wanted to show that the boys know more than any of the teachers," says Bennett.
"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."
"That's kind of what Hector is trying to say," says Richard Griffiths. "It's not about
some poxy exam or some course at university. Life is about life."
'Literature can help re-create, inwardly, that shared sense of being human without
which our world would truly be a wilderness, a chaos.' - Richard Hoggart
'In the Platonic Academy or Athenian gymnasium, in the Papuan long house, in
British public schools, in religious seminaries of every hue, homoeroticism has not only
flourished but been regarded as educative.' - George Steiner
Cast (in alphabetical order)
Samuel Anderson (Crowther)
Samuel Anderson originated the role of Crowther in Nicholas Hytner's
award-winning National Theatre production of The History Boys and reprised his role in the
regional and international tours of the play and on Broadway. His work in theatre includes
Talking Loud at the Latchmere. On television he has appeared in Hex, Royal Deaths and
Diseases, Doctors and The Afternoon Tea Play.
Samuel Barnett (Posner)
Samuel Barnett originated the role of Posner in Nicholas Hytner's award-winning
National Theatre production of The History Boys and reprised his role in the regional and
international tours of the play and on Broadway where he received a Tony nomination for
Best Featured Actor in a Play. He trained at LAMDA. His theatre credits include His Dark
Materials at the National, The Marriage of Figaro for the Royal Exchange, Manchester, The
Accrington Pals for Chichester Festival Theatre and Frankenstein at the Open Air Theatre.
TV includes The Royal, Doctors, Strange, Inspector Linley and Coupling. Radio includes
The Nightmare Before Christmas.
Dominic Cooper (Dakin)
Dominic Cooper originated the role of Dakin in Nicholas Hytner's award-winning
National Theatre production of The History Boys and reprised his role in the regional and
international tours of the play and on Broadway. He trained at LAMDA. His theatre credits
include Will in His Dark Materials and Mother Clap's Molly House at the National, the Caryl
Churchill Event at the Royal Court and A Midsummer Night's Dream for the Royal
Shakespeare Company. On television, he has appeared in Down to Earth, Sparkling
Cyanide, The Gentleman Thief, Davison's Eyes - HG Wells, and Band of Brothers. His
feature film credits include Breakfast on Pluto, Boudicca, I'll Be There, Anazapta, The Final
Curtain and From Hell.
James Corden (Timms)
James Corden originated the role of Timms in Nicholas Hytner's award-winning
National Theatre production of The History Boys and reprised his role in the regional and
international tours of the play and on Broadway. His theatre work includes Martin Guerre at
the Prince Edward and Love Life at Covent Garden. On television he appeared in three
series of Fat Friends, Dalziel & Pascoe, Judge John Deed, Teachers, Hollyoaks, Boyz
Unlimited, The Vicar of Dibley and The Bill.
His feature film credits include Heartlands, All or Nothing, Whatever Happened to
Harold Smith and Twentyfourseven. He has also appeared in the short films Cruise of the
Gods and Jack & the Beanstalk - The Real Story.
Frances de la Tour (Mrs Lintott)
Frances de la Tour originated the role of Mrs Lintott in Nicholas Hytner's
award-winning National Theatre production of The History Boys and reprised her role in the
regional and international tours of the play and on Broadway where she received the Tony
Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play. She trained at Drama Centre. Her work in
theatre includes The Good Hope, The Forest, Les Parents Terribles, Brighton Beach
Memoirs and the title role in Saint Joan for the National; Antony and Cleopatra, A
Midsummer Night's Dream, The Relapse and As You Like It for the Royal Shakespeare
Company; The Dance of Death at the Lyric and Sydney Theatre Festival; Fallen Angels in
the West End, for which she won the Variety Club Best Actress Award; The Play About The
Baby at the Almeida; The Fire Raisers and Dance of Death at Riverside Studios; Three Tall
Women at Wyndham's; Grease Paint, Façades, the title role in Lilian and Chekov's Women
at the Lyric; The Pope and the Witch and Small Craft Warnings at the Comedy; When She
Danced at the Globe, for which she won an Olivier for Best Supporting Actress; King Lear
at the Old Vic; A Moon for the Misbegotten, for which she won an Olivier for Best Actress,
and Uncle Vanya at the Haymarket; Skirmishes and Daughters of Men at Hampstead; Duet
for One at the Bush and Duke of York's, for which she won both The Standard and Olivier
Awards for Best Actress; the title role in Hamlet, Can't Pay Won't Pay and Landscape of
Exiles at the Half Moon; Wheelchair Millie at the Royal Court; and Banana Box at the
Apollo.
On television, she has appeared in Pierrot, Waking The Dead, Born & Bred, The
Egg, Tom Jones, Cold Lazarus, Downwardly Mobile, Genghis Cohen, Every Silver Lining,
Stay Lucky, Bejewelled, A Kind of Living, Murder With Mirrors, Duet for One (BAFTA
nomination for Best Actress), Skirmishes, Flickers, Housewives' Choice, All Good Men,
and Miss Jones in Rising Damp.
Her feature film credits include Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, The Cherry
Orchard and Rising Damp for which she won Best Actress at the Evening Standard Film
Awards.
Sacha Dhawan (Akthar)
Sacha Dhawan originated the role of Akthar in Nicholas Hytner's award-winning
National Theatre production of The History Boys and reprised his role in the regional and
international tours of the play and on Broadway. On stage, he has appeared The Witches
and East is East for Leicester Haymarket, and Borstal Boy on the Edinburgh Fringe. His
television credits include Perfectly Frank, Weirdsister College, Altogether Now, City
Central, The Last Train, Out of Sight II & III and most recently, the controversial drama,
Bradford Riots.
Richard Griffiths (Hector)
Richard Griffiths originated the role of Hector in Nicholas Hytner's National Theatre
production of The History Boys for which he received the Olivier Award for Best Actor. He
reprised his role in the regional and international tours of the play and on Broadway where
he won the Tony Award for Best Leading Actor in a Play. His work in theatre includes
Luther at the National; The White Guard, Once in a Lifetime (also at the Piccadilly), the title
role in Henry VIII, Volpone and Red Star for the Royal Shakespeare Company; Art at
Wyndham's; The Man Who Came To Dinner and Katherine Howard at Chichester; and
Heartbreak House, the title role in Galileo and Rules of the Game at the Almeida. He
recently appeared in the West End production of Heroes co-starring Ken Stott and John
Hurt.
On television, he has appeared in The Brides in the Bath, The Truth, TLC, History of
Britain, Gormenghast, Hope and Glory, Inspector Morse, Pie in the Sky (Series 1-4), In the
Red, Ted and Ralph, Nobody's Perfect, Amnesty, Bird of Prey, Whoops Apocalypse, The
World Cup - A Captain's Tale, The Cleopatras, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Anything
Legal Considered, Ffizz, The Marksman, A Kind of Living, A Wanted Man, Perfect
Scoundrels, The Good Guys, El Cid and Mr Wakefield's Crusade. His radio credits include
A Christmas Carol, All's Well That Ends Well, Meet Mr Mulliner, The Charterhouse of
Parma, Gate of Baghdad and Moby Dick.
Griffiths' feature film credits include Gandhi, Stage Beauty, Harry Potter I, II & III,
Vatel, Sleepy Hollow, Guarding Tess, Superman II, Britannia Hospital, Funny Bones,
Blame It On The Bellboy, Naked Gun 2, King Ralph, GoldenEye, Withnail and I, Shanghai
Surprise, A Private Function, Gorky Park, The French Lieutenant's Woman, Ragtime and
Chariots of Fire. He will soon be seen in Roger Michell's Venus opposite Peter O'Toole and
Leslie Phillips.
Andrew Knott (Lockwood)
Andrew Knott originated the role of Lockwood in Nicholas Hytner's award-winning
National Theatre production of The History Boys and reprised his role in the regional and
international tours of the play and on Broadway. His work in theatre includes 25 Years of
OTW at Oldham Coliseum, Ruling Passion for Dancehouse and A Tale of Two Cities for
Green Room. On television, he has appeared in Nasreen & Steve, The Bill, Casualty,
Where The Heart Is, Heartbeat, Coronation Street, The Ward, How We Used To Live,
Emmerdale and Cracker. His feature film credits include Black Beauty and The Secret
Garden.
Clive Merrison (Headmaster)
Clive Merrison originated the role of the Headmaster in Nicholas Hytner's
award-winning National Theatre production of The History Boys and reprised his role in the
regional and international tours of the play and on Broadway. His theatre work includes
The Madness of George III (also on tour in the US) and Fair Ladies At A Game Of Poem
Cards for the National on the South Bank, Macbeth, The Cherry Orchard, The Front Page,
Saturday, Sunday, Monday (also Queen's Theatre), The Misanthrope and 'Tis pity She's a
Whore for the National at the Old Vic; Much Ado About Nothing, The Caucasian Chalk
Circle, Mephisto, A Loud Boy's Life, Troilus and Cressida, Principia Scriptoriae and Bastard
Angel for the Royal Shakespeare Company; Credible Witness for the Royal Court; The
Cocktail Party at the Edinburgh Lyceum; Reader at The Traverse; The Browning Version at
Greenwich Theatre; and The Possessed at the Almeida.
His television credits include The Brief, The Two Lives of Anthony Trollope, Foyle's
War, Midsomer Murders, Believe Nothing, The Falklands Play, Julius Caesar, Lexx, Meat
Extract, Leprechauns, Life Support, How Do You Want Me?, The Round Tower, Mortimer's
Law, Stalin and Mary Shelley. Radio includes Sherlock Holmes in the BBC recordings of
the complete canon. He won the Sony Best Actor Award in 1984 for Luther.
Feature film credits include Discovery of Heaven, Pandemonium, Saving Grace, Up
At The Villa, Photographing The Fairies, The English Patient, Heavenly Creatures, An
Awfully Big Adventure, True Blue, Firefoy and Escape to Victory.
Stephen Campbell Moore (Irwin)
Stephen Campbell Moore originated the role of Irwin in Nicholas Hytner's
award-winning National Theatre production of The History Boys and reprised his role in the
regional and international tours of the play and on Broadway. His work in theatre includes
Much Ado About Nothing and Antony and Cleopatra for the Royal Shakespeare Company;
Death of a Salesman for Compass Theatre; A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Albery;
Richard II and Coriolanus for the Almeida at Gainsborough Studios; The Changeling at
Salisbury Playhouse; Richard III and The Two Gentleman of Verona at the Pendley
Shakespeare Festival; Toad of Toad Hall and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf at Dean's Hall,
Berkhamstead. On television, he starred in He Knew He was Right and Byron. His feature
credits include A Good Woman and Stephen Fry's Bright Young Things.
Jamie Parker (Scripps)
Jamie Parker trained at RADA. He originated the role of Scripps in Nicholas Hytner's
award-winning National Theatre production of The History Boys and reprised his role in the
regional and international tours of the play and on Broadway. His theatre work includes
Singer at the Tricycle; Between the Crosses at Jermyn Street Theatre; Coffee House,
Holes in the Skin and Gondoliers for Chichester Festival Theatre; and After the Dance for
the Oxford Stage Company. On television, he has appeared in As If and Foyle's War.
Adrian Scarborough (Wilkes)
Acclaimed stage actor Adrian Scarborough's feature film credits include Mike
Leigh's Vera Drake in which he memorably and sympathetically appeared as Vera's
brother-in-law; Bright Young Things; Gosford Park; Dirty Pretty Things and Love is the
Devil.
On television he was seen A Dance to the Music of Time and has appeared in
popular series including The Bill and Midsomer Murders.
He has worked extensively at the National Theatre, as Flute in Robert LePage's
production of A Midsummer Night's Dream and as Mole in Nicholas Hytner's The Wind in
the Willows. Other National productions include Hytner's The Recruiting Officer, Richard
Eyre's production of David Hare's trilogy (Racing Demon, Murmuring Judges and The
Absence of War) and as Rosencrantz in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. Other
stage credits include Howard Davies' production of Vassa at the Albery Theatre, Sam
Mendes' production of To the Green Fields Beyond at the Donmar Warehouse, Platanov
for Jonathan Kent at the Almeida, the West End transfer of Humble Boy, and Robert
Delamere's Donmar Warehouse production of Dario Fo's Accidental Death of an Anarchist.
Georgia Taylor (Fiona)
Georgia Taylor is perhaps best-known for her long running role as Toyah Battersby
in the ever popular ITV drama Coronation Street for which she won several awards
including a 2001 RTS Award for Best Performance in a Network Soap. She has most
recently completed the forthcoming BBC1 drama Lilies and was seen in their hit drama Life
on Mars. Her other TV credits include the critically acclaimed BBC mini-series Blackpool
and its sequel Viva Blackpool; Girls' Club and Where the Heart is. On stage Taylor has
appeared in The Woman Before at the Royal Court and Christmas is Miles Away at the
Royal Exchange Theatre. THE HISTORY BOYS marks Georgia Taylor's debut feature film
performance.
Russell Tovey (Rudge)
Russell Tovey's work in theatre includes His Dark Materials, His Girl Friday, Henry V
and Howard Katz at the National; Plasticine at the Royal Court; and The Recruiting Officer
at the Chichester Festival Theatre. On television, he has appeared in Servants, William
and Mary, Ultimate Force, Silent Witness, NCS, Anchor Me, Poirot, Holby City, Mrs Bradley
Mysteries, Hope and Glory and The Bill. His film credits include the shorts The Emperor's
New Clothes, The Nugget Run and the BAFTA-nominated Red Peppers.
Penelope Wilton (Mrs Bibby)
Penelope Wilton's career in the theatre, film and television spans three decades and
includes many memorable performances. Her most recent films include; Joe Wright's hit
version of Pride and Prejudice; Woody Allen's Match Point, Calendar Girls; Shaun of the
Dead and Iris. Other feature credits include; Clockwise, Cry Freedom, The Borrowers, The
Secret Rapture and Tom's Midnight Garden.
On stage, Penelope Wilton has worked with some of the finest British writers and
directors including Jonathan Miller, Christopher Hampton, Richard Eyre, Harold Pinter,
David Hare, Alan Ayckbourn, Howard Davies, Karel Reisz, Adrian Noble and Peter Hall.
She has received three Olivier award nominations and a Best Actress Award from the
Critic's Circle for Reisz' The Deep Blue Sea.
Penelope Wilton was awarded the OBE in the 2004 New Year's Honours List for her
services to drama.
Crew
Nicholas Hytner (Director)
Nicholas Hytner is Director of the National Theatre. His work includes productions at
the Northcott Theatre, Exeter, Leeds Playhouse, and Royal Exchange Theatre,
Manchester, where he was Associate Director. He has directed Measure for Measure, The
Tempest and King Lear for the RSC. For the National: Ghetto, The Wind in the Willows,
The Madness of George III, The Recruiting Officer, Carousel, The Cripple of Inishmaan,
The Winter's Tale, Mother Clap's Molly House and, as Director of the NT, Henry IV Parts 1
& 2, His Dark Materials, Henry V, The History Boys and Stuff Happens. Other work in
London includes Miss Saigon, The Importance of Being Earnest, Cressida, The Lady in the
Van, and Orpheus Descending; in New York Carousel, Twelfth Night, and The Sweet Smell
of Success on Broadway.
Opera includes productions for Kent Opera, ENO, Glyndebourne, Paris Opera, the
Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris, Geneva Opera, and the Bavarian State Opera, Munich. Films:
The History Boys, The Madness of King George, The Crucible and The Object of My
Affection.
Alan Bennett (Writer)
Alan Bennett first appeared on stage in 1960 with Peter Cook, Dudley Moore and
Jonathan Miller in the revue Beyond the Fringe. His stage plays are Forty Years On,
Habeas Corpus, The Old Country, Getting On, Enjoy, Kafka's Dick, An Englishman Abroad
and A Question of Attribution (1988, staged together at the National as Single Spies, with
Bennett directing the former and appearing in both), an adaptation of Kenneth Grahame's
The Wind in the Willows (NT 1990,1991,1993 and 1994), The Madness of George III (NT
1991 & 1992, also touring America, Greece and Israel), The Lady in the Van, and several
of the monologues from the Talking Heads collection: A Chip in the Sugar, A Lady of
Letters and A Woman of No Importance (which he also directed and appeared in, winning
the Laurence Olivier Award for Outstanding Entertainment and Most Outstanding
Performance in a Musical or Entertainment), Bed Among the Lentils and Soldiering On
(which he also directed).
His work for television includes A Day Out, Sunset Across the Bay, A Visit from Miss
Prothero, Me, I'm Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Doris and Doreen, The Old Crowd, Afternoon
Off, One Fine Day, All Day on the Sands, Intensive Care (in which he played the leading
role), Our Winnie, Marks, Rolling Home, Say Something Happened, A Woman of No
Importance, An Englishman Abroad, The Insurance Man, 102 Boulevard Haussmann and
two collections of Talking Heads monologues, the second of which won the South Bank
Show Award for Best Drama.
Bennett's feature film credits include A Private Function, Prick Up Your Ears and
The Madness of King George (which was nominated for two Academy Awards including
Best Adapted Screenplay).
A collection of his prose writing, Writing Home, was published by Faber and Faber in
1994 followed by the bestselling compendium, Untold Stories, in 2005.
Kevin Loader (Producer)
Kevin Loader spent 14 years at the BBC, producing current affairs, arts programmes
and television drama, before moving into feature films in 1997.
His non-drama BBC work included directing documentaries for Omnibus, Arena and
Review, as well as executive-producing the groundbreaking arts magazine programme The
Late Show. His BBC dramas included Clarissa, and the award-winning The Buddha of
Suburbia directed by Roger Michell. Other television credits include My Night with Reg
(1996), Degrees of Error (1995), Bed (1995), and Look at It This Way (1992). Loader also
executive produced a number of award-winning programmes including The Crow Road,
Holding On and Peter Flannery's Our Friends in the North.
Loader left the BBC to manage The Bridge, a London-based joint-venture between
Sony Pictures and Canal Plus, which developed a slate of feature films and made the
teenage comedy, Virtual Sexuality. In 2001, Loader produced Captain Corelli's Mandolin,
starring Nicolas Cage, John Hurt and Penelope Cruz, which he brought to Working Title
Films. This was followed by Mike Barker's To Kill A King and Paul Morrison's Wondrous
Oblivion.
Loader and director Roger Michell are partners in the production company Free
Range Films which recently produced Enduring Love adapted by Joe Penhall from the
novel by Ian McEwan and The Mother from an original script by Hanif Kurieshi. Most
recently, Loader re-teamed with director Michell and writer Kurieshi for the upcoming
Venus starring Peter O'Toole, Leslie Phillips, Richard Griffiths and Vanessa Redgrave.
Loader and Damian Jones re-teamed for Dan Reed's upcoming feature debut,
Straightheads starring Gillian Anderson.
Damian Jones (Producer)
Damian Jones has produced more than 15 feature films in the last 10 years, several
of which have been chosen for official selection by the Cannes, Venice, Toronto and
Sundance Film Festivals.
Jones' feature film credits as producer include Michael Winterbottom's Welcome to
Sarajevo, Danny Boyle's Millions , Vondie Curtis Hall's Gridlock'd starring Tupac Shakur,
Greg Araki's Splendour, Simon Cellan Jones' Some Voices starring Daniel Craig and most
recently, Menhaj Huda's critically acclaimed, Kidulthood. He received a BAFTA in 1990 for
Peter Hewitt's short The Candy Show.
Upcoming features include Dan Wilde's Alpha Male and Dan Reed's Straightheads
starring Gillian Anderson which he produced together with Kevin Loader.
Andrew Dunn BSC (Director of Photography)
Andrew Dunn previously collaborated with director Nicholas Hytner on The Madness
of King George for which he received the BAFTA and British Society of Cinematographers
Awards for Best Cinematography and the Evening Standard British Film Award for Best
Technical Achievement, and on Hytner's Oscar-nominated version of Arthur Miller's The
Crucible.
Other feature film credits include Gosford Park, Sweet Home Alabama, The Count
of Monte Cristo, Practical Magic, The Bodyguard and most recently, Stage Beauty, Hitch
and Mrs Henderson Presents.
Andrew Dunn has also worked extensively in television with credits including
Richard Eyre's Suddenly, Last Summer and Tumbledown and Dennis Potter's Blackeyes.
He is a three-time winner of the BAFTA TV Award for Cinematography for The Monocled
Mutineer, Edge of Darkness and Threads.
John Beard (Production Designer)
John Beard began his career as an assistant art director on The Life of Brian and
went on to art direct the Python's Meaning of Life and Terry Gilliam's Brazil. He was the
production designer for Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ and is a frequent
collaborator of director Iain Softley on films including The Wings of the Dove, K-Pax and
most recently, Skeleton Key. His feature film credits include The Browning Version for
director Mike Figgis, Chris Menges' The Lost Son, Michael Apted's Enigma, and most
recently, Stephen Woolley's Stoned.
Justine Luxton (Costume Designer)
Justine Luxton's feature film credits include The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Leon the
Pig Farmer and Mel Gibson's Oscar-winning Braveheart on which she served as costume
design assistant. Most recently, she designed the costumes for the upcoming thriller
Straightheads starring Gillian Anderson.
On television, Luxton has designed costumes for the popular UK series Auf
Wiedersehen Pet and most recently, The Taming of the Shrew for the BBC and Channel
Four's The Government Inspector. Other credits include the Edinburgh and RTS Television
Award winner Out of Control and The Commander for ITV.
John Wilson ACE (Editor)
John Wilson's career in film and television began in 1976 and since then has
included frequent collaborations with director Peter Greenaway, from his early short films
through to The Draughtsman's Contract, Drowning by Numbers, Belly of an Architect, and
The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover. Wilson received BAFTA and ACE nominations
for his work on Stephen Daldry's Billy Elliott. Other feature film credits include Decadence,
Resurrection Man, The Debt Collector, Happy Now, and more recently, On a Clear Day.
Wilson's numerous small screen credits include the popular series Dalziel & Pascoe,
the Catherine Cookson adaptations Gambling Man, The Round Tower and Colour Blind
and the drama Passer By directed by David Morrissey.
George Fenton (Composer)
Five-time Oscar and three-time Grammy nominee George Fenton began writing
scores in 1974 after a brief career performing and songwriting. He now works exclusively in
film, theatre and television. Among his first commissions for television were Bloody Kids,
Going Gently and Saigon - Year of the Cat, all directed by Stephen Frears. Compositions
for television also include The Jewel in the Crown, The Monocled Mutineer and The History
Man. He has written music for many of Alan Bennett's plays as well as popular signature
tunes for series including Shoestring and Bergerac. Fenton has composed music for the
documentary series The Trials of Life, Beyond the Clouds, Shanghai Vice and The Blue
Planet. He has also written more than 50 feature film scores including The Company of
Wolves, Gandhi, Cry Freedom, Dangerous Liaisons, The Fisher King, Groundhog Day, The
Madness of King George, You've Got Mail, Shadowlands, and Ken Loach's Land and
Freedom, My Name is Joe, Sweet Sixteen and Ae Fond Kiss. He has received Ivor Novello
and Emmy awards in addition to his Oscar nominations for Best Original Score for The
Fisher King, Dangerous Liaisons, Cry Freedom (for which he also received a nomination
for Best Song) and Gandhi. Fenton has also received three Grammy nominations and has
won BAFTA Awards for The Blue Planet, The Monocled Mutineer, the History Man and
Going Gently.
Fox Searchlight Pictures
Fox Searchlight Pictures is a filmmaker-oriented company that focuses on distinctive
films helmed by world-class auteurs and exciting newcomers. It has its own marketing and
distribution operations and its films are distributed internationally by Twentieth Century Fox.
Fox Searchlight Pictures is a unit of Fox Filmed Entertainment, a unit of Fox Entertainment
Group.
DNA Films
DNA Films is devoted to acquiring, producing, financing and distributing theatrical
feature films for a worldwide audience.
Since August 2003, DNA has been a joint venture with Fox Searchlight Pictures, the
specialist distributor of Twentieth Century Fox. In the first two years since the formation of
this partnership, the company has financed and produced five films with The History Boys,
Notes on a Scandal, The Last King of Scotland and Sunshine being the latest slate ready
for release later this year. The company is led by Andrew Macdonald (Producer of Shallow
Grave, Trainspotting, The Beach, 28 Days Later) with creative partner Allon Reich
(Executive Producer of Four Feathers and Dirty Pretty Things and former head of Film for
Miramax-HAL).
BBC Films
BBC Films is the feature film-making arm of the British Broadcasting Corporation. It
is firmly established at the forefront of independent film-making in the UK and co-produces
approximately eight films a year.
BBC Films productions include John Madden's Mrs Brown, Stephen Daldry's Billy
Elliot (BBC Films' most successful film to date, which has taken over $100m worldwide,
won three major British Academy Film Awards and was nominated for three Academy
Awards); Richard Eyre's Iris; Stephen Frears' Dirty Pretty Things; Tim Fywell's I Capture
The Castle; Michael Winterbottom's Berlin Golden Bear winner In This World; Christine
Jeffs' Sylvia; Roger Michell's The Mother; Lynne Ramsay's Ratcatcher and Morvern Callar;
Pawel Pawlikowski's BAFTA winners Last Resort and My Summer of Love; Golden Globe
winner The Life And Death of Peter Sellers; Saul Dibb's Bullet Boy; and Danny Boyle's
Millions.
Recent releases include Confetti, starring a host of British comedy talent including
Martin Freeman, Jessica Stevenson, Alison Steadman and Jimmy Carr; Imagine Me and
You starring Piper Perabo and Lena Headey; Stephen Frears' Mrs Henderson Presents,
Woody Allen's first UK-set film, Match Point and Michael Caton-Jones' Shooting Dogs
starring John Hurt and Hugh Dancy.
Cast
Richard Griffiths
Hector
Frances de la Tour
Mrs Lintott
Stephen Campbell Moore
Irwin
Samuel Barnett
Posner
Dominic Cooper
Dakin
James Corden
Timms
Jamie Parker
Scripps
Russell Tovey
Rudge
Samuel Anderson
Crowther
Sacha Dhawan
Akthar
Andrew Knott
Lockwood
Clive Merrison
Headmaster
Penelope Wilton
Mrs Bibby
Adrian Scarborough
Wilkes
Georgia Taylor
Fiona
Maggie McCarthy
Lollipop Lady
Colin Haigh
Oxford Porter
Iain Mitchell
Oxford Don
David Killick
Neighbouring Don
Patrick Godfrey
Sleeping Clergyman
Rocky Taylor
Stunt Double for Hector
Crew
Directed by
Nicholas Hytner
Based on the play by
Alan Bennett
Written by
Alan Bennett
Produced by
Kevin Loader
Nicholas Hytner
Damian Jones
Executive Producers
Charles Moore
Miles Ketley
Executive Producers
Andrew Macdonald
Allon Reich
David M Thompson
Line Producer
Julia Stannard
Director of Photography
Andrew Dunn BSC
Production Designer
John Beard
Film Editor
John Wilson ACE
Costume Designer
Justine Luxton
Hair and Make-up Designer
Daniel Phillips
Music composed by
George Fenton
Casting Director
Toby Whale CDG
First Assistant Director
Jack Ravenscroft
Second Assistant Director
Fiona Gosden
Third Assistant Director
Harriet Worth
Floor Runner
Nick Starr
Floor Trainee
Tilly Gerrard-Bannister
Production Co-ordinator
James Biddle
Assistant Production Co-ordinator
Nicky Earnshaw
Production Assistant
Jamie Voss
Production Trainees
Yoko Lytle
Jaideep Shah
Production Accountant
Maxine Davis
Assistant Production Accountants
Georgina Kelly
Claire Mitchell
Producers' Assistant
Lisa Williams
Script Supervisor
Sue Hills
Location Manager
Alex Sutherland
Location Assistant
Mark Cushman
Location Assistant (Yorkshire)
Gary Barnes
Location Security
Derek Moss
Health & Safety Officer
Jason Curtis
Steadicam & B Camera Operator
Gerry Vasbenter
First Assistants A Camera
Dermot Hickey
Mark Milsome
First Assistant B Camera
Nathan Mann
Second Assistant Camera
Harry Bowers
Clapper Loader B Camera
David Churchyard
Camera Trainee
Joe Mastrangelo
Camera FT2 Trainee
Chris McAleese
Gaffer
Andy Long
Rigging Gaffer
Bill Tracey
Key Grip
Rupert Lloyd Parry
FT2 Trainee Grip
Daniel Rake
Set Decorator
Joanne Woollard
Assistant Art Director
Emily Lutyens
Art Department Assistant
James Collins
Art Department FT2 Trainee
Rebecca Thomas
Prop Master
Julian Searle
Prop Hands
Robert Judd
Michael Povey
Assistant Prop Buyer
Rosie Goodwin
Construction Manager
Harry Metcalfe
National Theatre Production Design by
Bob Crowley
Wardrobe Supervisor
Peter Halston
Wardrobe Trainee
Lucy Donowho
Hair & Make-Up Artist
Elaina Conneely
Hair & Make-Up FT2 Trainee
Karen Scott
Production Sound Mixer
John Midgley
Production Sound Maintenance
Clive Osborne
Production Sound Trainee
Charlotte gray
Post-Production Supervisor
Maria Walker
Assistant Film Editor
Sascha Dhillon
Supervising Sound Editor
Zane Hayward
Dialogue Editor
Joakim Sundström
Re-Recording Mixers
Andy Thompson
Mark Appleby
ADR Mixers
Robert Farr
Jamie Roden
Foley Mixer
Paul Carr
Foley Artist
Susie Harding
Stills Photographer
Alex Bailey
Unit Publicity
Charles McDonald
Liz Miller
Matthew Sanders
EPK Director
Ben Taylor
Music Supervisor
Ian Neil
Music Director
Richard Sisson
Performed Music re-recorded at
Sarm Studios
Music Editor
Emily Rogers
Music Score recorded at
Angel Recording Studios, London
Engineer
James Collins
ProTools
Mat Bartram
Music Associate
Simon Chamberlain
Digital Intermediate provided by
One Post (London)
Digital Colourist
Vince Narduzzo
Digital On-Line Editor
Rob Gordon
Assistant Digital On-Line Editor
Emily greenwood
Digital Intermediate Producer
Matt Adams
Assistant Digital Intermediate Producer
Jo-Ann Darby
Digital Film Technical Director
Laurent Treherne
Digital Film Technical Manager
John Hinchliffe
Cambridge Second Unit
Second Unit Director
John Wilson
First Assistant Director
Sarah Macfarlane
Director of Photography
Gerry Vasbenter
Caterer
Leila Mcalister
Catering Assistants
Luis Miguel Antunes
Lisa Armour-Brown
Jason Breckenridge
Benjamin Collard
Rosamund Connelly
Marco Fugallo
Catherine T James
Sylvain Jamois
Keiko Hammonds
Frank Hannon
Laura Pomeroy
Rose Pomeroy
Carmen Saccone
Chaperones
Lyn Evans
Linda Harman
Stephen Hussey
Vanessa Kimberley
Julis Lloyd
Ana Stillard
Kim Thomas
Pamela Timmis
Unit Driver
Peter Veldhoen
Facilities Driver
Nigel Venables
Dean Macey
John Darcy "Bullet"
Ken Clarke
Don McLean
John Bailey
Wayne Fleetwood
Action Vehicle Co-ordinator
Ben Dillon
For the National Theatre
Director
Nicholas Hytner
Executive Director
Nick Starr
Assistant to the Directors
Niamh Dilworth
Casting Assistant
Alastair Coomer
Head of Costume
Carol Lingwood
For BBC Films
Production Executive
Jane Hawley
Head of Rights and Commercial Affairs
Jane Wright
Head of Business and Legal Affairs
Isabel Begg
Production and Finance Co-ordinator
Matthew Vizard
Assistant to David Thompson
Emma Parker
For DNA Films
General Manager
Joanne Smith
Post-Production Supervisor
Clare St John
Executive Producer's Assistant
Carey Berlin
Executive Producer's Assistant Production Assistant Tanya Phegan
Production Legal Services
Jacob Melton
Auditors
WIGGIN LLP
AGN Shipleys
Steve Joberns
Negative Checks and Script Clearances
Barn Owl Picture Company
Camera Equipment
Panavision UK
Lighting Equipment
Arri Lighting
Grip Equipment
Alpha Grip
Editing Equipment
London Editing Machines
Originated on Motion Picture Film from Fuji
Titles designed by
MATT Curtis AP
Colour by
TODD-AO UK & Soho Images
Laboratory Contact
Dick Knapman for Todd-AO
Colin Pearce for Soho images
Insurance
Kevin O'Shea
AON/Albert G Ruben
Publicity
McDonald & Rutter
Post-Production Facilities
Ascent Media Group Limited
Goldcrest
Sound Equipment
Audiolink
Negative Cutters
Computamatch
Extras Casting
Mad Dog Casting
Costume Hire
Carlo Manzi
Post-Production Script
Sapex
Health and Safety/Medical Services
Media Safety Ltd
Action Vehicles
MGM cars
Couriers
Cyclone
Walkie Talkies supplied by
John Midgley
Stills Laboratory
Lofty's Lab
Literary extracts
'A Shropshire Lad' & 'On Wenlock Edge the Wood's in Trouble'
Written by AE Housman
Used by permission of The Society of Authors Ltd
'Musée des Beaux Arts' and 'Lullaby'
Written by WH Auden
Used by permission of Curtis Brown Ltd
'Voices against England in the Night'
Written by Stevie Smith
Used by permission of the James MacGibbon Estate
'MCMXIV'
Written by Philip Larkin
Used by permission of Faber & Faber Limited and The Society of Authors for the Estate of Philip
Larkin
"Brief Encounter"
Dialogue extract courtesy of Granada International
Source Music Credits
"L'Accordéoniste"
Written by Michel Emer
© 1945 SEMI France
Peer Music (UK) Ltd London
Performed by Samuel Barnett & Jamie Parker
"Bewitched"
Written by Lorenz Hart & Richard Rodgers
© Chappell & Co Inc/Williamson Music
Performed by Samuel Barnett & Jamie Parker
"Now Voyager"
Written by Max Steiner
© M Witmark & Sons/Warner/Chappell Music Ltd
Performed by Jamie Parker
"Piano Concerto No 2 in C Minor - Adagio Sostenuto"
Composed by Sergei Rachmaninoff
By kind permission of Boosey & Hawkes Music Publishers Ltd
Performed by Jamie Parker
"Wish Me Luck (As You Wave Me Goodbye)"
Written by Harry Parr-Davies & Phil Park
© Chappell Music Ltd
Performed by The History Boys
"Bye Bye Blackbird"
Written by Mort Dixon & Ray Henderson
© 1926 (Renewed 1953) All rights for the extended term administered by the Fred Ahlert Music
Corporation on behalf of Olde Clover Leaf Music
© Remick Music Corp
By kind permission of Ray Henderson Music Inc and Redwood Music Ltd care of Carlin Music Corp
© Warner Bros Inc
By kind permission of Warner/Chappell Music Ltd
Performed by Samuel Barnett, Jamie Parker and The History Boys
"Wish Me Luck (As You Wave Me Goodbye)"
Written by Harry Parr-Davies and Phil Park
© Chappell Music Ltd
Performed by Gracie Fields
Licensed courtesy of EMI Records Ltd
"Blue Monday"
Written by Stephen Morris, Peter Hook, Bernard Sumner and Gillian Gilbert
© Be Music/Warner/Chappell Music Ltd
Performed by New Order
Licensed courtesy of Rhino UK
"This Charming Man"
Written by Steven Morrissey and Johnny Marr
© Warner/Chappell Music Ltd/Universal Music Publishing Ltd
Performed by The Smiths
Licensed courtesy of Rhino UK
"Mustapha Dance"
Written by Joe Strummer, Mick Jones, Paul Simonon, Topper Headon
© Universal Music Publishing Ltd on behalf of Nineden Ltd
Performed by The Clash
Licensed courtesy of
SONY BMG Music Entertainment (UK) Limited
"Never Stop" (Discotheque)"
Written by Ian McCulloch, William Sergeant, Leslie Pattinson and Pete De Freitas
© Zoo Music Ltd/Warner/Chappell Music Ltd
Performed by Echo And The Bunnymen
Licensed courtesy of Rhino UK
"A Forest"
Written by Robert Smith, Lol Tolhurst, Simon Gallup, Mathieu Hartley
© Fiction Songs Ltd/BMG Music Publishing Ltd
Performed by The Cure
Licensed courtesy of Polydor Ltd (UK) Under license from Universal Music Enterprises
"Papa's Got A Brand New Pigbag"
Written by Simon Underwood, Oliver Moore, James Johnstone, Andrew Carpenter, Christopher
Hamlyn, Christopher Lee and Roger Freeman
© Mistral Music Ltd/Warner/Chappell Music Ltd
Performed by Pigbag
Licensed courtesy of SONY BMG Music Entertainment (UK) Limited
"Bewitched"
Written by Lorenz Hart & Richard Rodgers
© Chappell & Co Inc/Williamson Music
Performed by Rufus Wainwright
Courtesy of Geffen Records/Polydor UK Ltd
Licensed by kind permission from the Film & TV licensing division
Part of the Universal Music Group
Soundtrack available on Korova Records www.korovarecords.com
The Filmmakers wish to thank
The National Trust, Dulwich Picture Gallery, Dulwich College, Alleyn's School, Latymer School,
James Allen's Girls' School,
Faber and Faber Limited, Penguin Books Ltd, Taylor and Francis Group,
Phaidon Press Ltd, Random House, Peter Joly and Goldcrest, Screen Yorkshire
The Provost and Fellows of King's College, Cambridge
St John's and Queens' Colleges and Trinity Hall, Cambridge Magdalen and Corpus Christi Colleges
and Christ Church, Oxford
The Bodleian Library and Divinity Schools, Oxford University
Anthony Jones, Maria Dawson and Gina Brown from PFD
and all the staff of The National Theatre.
The Producers and Director would also like to thank the staff and pupils of Watford Grammar School
for Boys and Watford Grammar School for Girls for their assistance and enthusiasm
Filmed on location in England in Watford, Elland and Halifax, in the colleges of Cambridge and
Oxford Universities and at Fountains Abbey, North Yorkshire.
Made with the support of the UK Film Council
© History Boys Ltd 2006
Released by Twentieth Century Fox