THE HISTORY BOYS

Year: 2006
USA: Fox Searchlight
UK: Twentieth Century Fox
Cast: 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, Clive Merrison, Jack Bagley, Robbie Jarvis, Jon Overton
Director: Nicholas Hytner
Country: UK
USA & UK: 112 mins
USA Rated: R for language and sexual content
UK Certificate: 15 contains strong sex references and very strong language
USA Release Date: 21 November 2006 (Limited Release)
UK Release Date: 13 October 2006

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. Akthar (Sacha Dhawan), Crowther (Samuel Anderson), Dakin (Dominic Cooper), Lockwood (Andrew Knott), Posner (Samuel Barnett), Rudge (Russell Tovey), Scripps (Jamie Parker) and Timms (James Corden) are the 'History Boys', the best and brightest at Cutler's Grammar School. Their headmaster (Clive Merrison) is obsessed with breaking into the ranks of those schools that regularly send boys up to Oxford and Cambridge and enlists Irwin (Stephen Campbell Moore), 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 (Richard Griffiths) and the regular diet of nourishing facts and figures dispensed by Mrs Lintott (Frances de la Tour), 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.

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