The premiere of The History Boys in 2004 was an incendiary affair. Curtain up was delayed by a fire in the lighting rig. Alan Bennett’s drama, though more rueful than raging, delivered a fiery blast against an education system that promoted smartness over truth; history as a parade of mighty men; Oxbridge snobberies. Nicholas Hytner’s National Theatre production blazed a trail for new young actors: among them Dominic Cooper, James Corden and Russell Tovey.
I had remembered the drama as swirling around the provoking, enticing figure of Hector, played with crumbling charisma by the late Richard Griffiths. He is the English teacher who, believing that exams are “the enemy of education… Which is not to say that I don’t regard education as the enemy of education too”, sets himself against a results-obsessed headmaster and a canny new controversialist teacher. He fills his pupils’ heads with literature that will flavour the experiences they go on to have. He also fiddles with the boys who ride pillion on his motorbike. I never felt, as some have, that Bennett was excusing the groping – it is, literally, a fatal flaw – though in a confrontation that I don’t remember from 20 years ago, a hypocrisy is neatly exposed: the headmaster who excoriates Hector thinks it perfectly OK to feel up his female secretary.
