Alan Bennett's 2004 play may feel eerily familiar: after all, it is about students revising for important exams. But the playwright is famous for illuminating grand themes through his seemingly ordinary characters, and The History Boys is no exception. The play is set in a northern school in the 1980s, where the students are preparing for tough Oxbridge applications. And as they and their teachers squabble about appropriate methods of education, what they are really discussing is the value of truth, knowledge and — of course — history itself.
The History Boys
Glossary
Commodify - Make into a sellable product.
Hodgepodge - A confusing mixture of different things.
Grammar school - In the UK, a state secondary school that select pupils with high marks in an exam taken at age 11.
Cultural capital - Social and cultural knowledge that is acquired throughout life and can act as an asset or advantage while living in society. For example: having cultural capital could mean you know how to dress in certain situations or could speak confidently about plays and literature if asked about them.
Infer - Form or an opinion or judge something to be true based on information you have available to you.
Holocaust - The murder of six million Jewish people in Europe by Nazi Germany. Members of other minority groups were also killed.