Bennett uses his characters to explore the British education system of the 1980s and convey his views on it in doing so. The play is set once the new curriculum had been brought in by Thatcher’s government, and the publication of ‘league tables’,...

Joyce’s and Bennett’s writing have become synonymous with the arduous process of becoming an adult, and, despite the large gulf in time between their works’ publication, use some similar techniques to describe the process. However, Bennett’s ‘The...

The headmaster is used by Bennett as a source of comedy in the play. He is used to provide different types of comedic elements; through his hypocritical nature where he strives for his school to do academically well, yet he himself is not...

The complex exploration of homosexual relations that break the boundaries between pupils and teachers should be typically identified as scandalous, and as a form of paedophilia in a school. However, Alan Bennett presents the issue at a modest...

“Give me the child for seven years and I will give you the man.”

In The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark and The History Boys by Alan Bennett, the authors are seen to be “playing with time”[1] by using flash-forwards and flash-backs to...

It is often speculated as to why Alan Bennett’s The History Boys has endured as a successful comedy despite the play’s often disturbing undertones and tragic themes such as the political state of Thatcherite Britain. However, it is in fact the...