Fandom overview: The History Boys
I'm kaydeefalls, and this is The History Boys, your latest small fandom getting recced this month.
How do I define history? It's just one fucking thing after another.
So in 2004, Alan Bennett writes a play that gets produced in London. Lots of people think it's incredibly spiffy, and it wins a bunch of awards. Eventually the production makes its way over to New York, where even more people fall in love with it and it wins even more awards. Fortunately, Bennett and his producers had the foresight to turn the play into a screenplay and film it - with the entire original cast - so that those of us who missed out when it was onstage could see it on the big screen, fall in love with it, and then obsess over the DVD.
Thus, The History Boys fandom was born.
The film version cuts a bit out of the play, but doesn't change any of the essentials, so for all practical purposes, the canon is the same for both movie and play.
Spoiler warning: nearly all of the fic in this fandom is set post-canon, so to read fic is basically to be spoiled for crucial plot points. Also, I have a thing for quotes, because the writing of this play/movie is just so damn good.
THE (spoiler-free) PLOT
Your A-Level results are the best we've ever had, and they demand that you return for an extra term to work for the examination for our ancient universities.
Set in Yorkshire in 1983, an unruly but brilliant group of sixth-form history students - the history boys - at Cutlers' Grammar School frantically prepare for the Oxford and Cambridge entrance examinations. In the process, they find themselves caught between two teachers with wildly contrasting styles: Hector, the inspiring old eccentric, who believes in knowledge for its own sake, and Irwin, the shrewd, slick young upstart, who teaches every aggressive trick and journalistic spin imaginable, emphasizing originality over truth. They've still got Mrs. Lintott to teach them the actual history, but she can hardly compete with Hector's charming peculiarities or Irwin's engaging lies. But at least she's not the one feeling up her pupils...
Add sex, egos, accidents, and occasionally even history into the mix, and you get a rather hectic term.
THE BOYS
Dakin - Dominic Cooper
I was thinking the half-smile, with just a hint of sadness...
Stuart Dakin is the school Lothario. He is made of sex. It's kind of hard to describe this, because you really do have to see him in action to fully appreciate it. He's currently sleeping with the Headmaster's secretary, has half the boys in love with him, and is working on seducing the new teacher, Irwin. He claims to be heterosexual, but really, once you've explicitly propositioned your male teacher for a blow-job, you're only kidding yourself. He's also very much a teenage boy, and fumbles nearly as often as he scores, especially with Irwin, whom he genuinely wants to impress, not just seduce. But he matures (well, somewhat) over the course of the play/film, and by the end, it's clear he's set to take over the world. According to the epilogue, he goes on to become a fantastically rich tax lawyer - although whether or not he's happy is up for debate.
Dakin: I'm just kicking the tyres on this one but, further to the drink, what I was really wondering was whether there were any circumstances in which there was any chance of your sucking me off. Or something similar. Actually, that would please Hector.
Irwin: What?
Dakin: "Your sucking me off." It's a gerund. He likes gerunds. And "your being scared shitless," that's another gerund.
If you're reading a slash fic in this fandom, odds are incredibly good that Dakin is one of the key players. At the end of the film, he asks Irwin out for a drink and a blow-job, but it never actually happens, so there's a lot of delayed gratification fic out there for those two. And then there's the thing with Posner…
Posner - Samuel Barnett
I'm a Jew, I'm small, I'm homosexual, and I live in Sheffield. I'm fucked.
David Posner is in many ways the youngest of the boys, although whether he's actually younger or just went through puberty way late isn't made clear. He's confused about his sexuality (at least at the start), he doesn't understand a lot of the more sexually-charged references the other boys make, and he seems to trail behind the others in several ways. But he's also very bright intellectually, and somehow seems emotionally wiser than his friends. And, of course, he's madly in love with Dakin.
Scripps: Oh, Pos, with your spaniel heart. It will pass.
Posner: Yes, it's a phase. Who says I want it to pass? But the pain, the pain.
Scripps: Hector would say it's the only education worth having.
Posner: I just wish there were marks for it.
It's hard to watch this film without falling in love with Posner. Only he could make teenage angst adorable instead of irritating. And he sings "Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered" to Dakin in front of the entire class. Posner is kind of awesome. He's also the only boy who really takes Hector's lessons to heart, and winds up a schoolteacher himself.
Scripps - Jamie Parker
The things I do for Jesus.
Don Scripps is Dakin's closest friend, and often Posner's confidante. He's just a generally friendly, likeable, compassionate chap. He plays the piano quite well, which is a plus in Hector's class. He's also by far the most religious of the bunch, but in a long-suffering sort of way, and not in the least bit self-righteous or preachy. He prays before exams and college interviews, corrects teachers on points of scripture, and, well, doesn't wank.
Dakin: I just wanted to say thank you.
Scripps: So? Give him a subscription to The Spectator or a box of Black Magic. Just because you've got a scholarship doesn't mean you've got to give him unfettered access to your dick.
Dakin: So how would you say thank you?
Scripps: Same as you probably. On my knees.
Scripps gets a lot of enjoyment listening to tales of Dakin's conquests and sympathizing with Posner's unrequited love, but much as he loves other people's stories (he even grows up to become a journalist), he never actually goes out and does anything for himself. Fic authors seem to love finally giving Scripps the chance to take action - usually by hooking him up with Posner or Dakin.
Rudge - Russell Tovey
I may not know much about Jean-Paul Sartre, but I have a handicap of four!
Rudge is the dumb jock of the group. Of course, being relatively thick in comparison to the rest of these boys still makes him fairly bright. He's far more interested in rugby and golf than in history, and is only really interested in getting into Oxbridge because all of his friends are. Everyone - including his teachers and particularly the Headmaster - underestimates Rudge. Which is a pity, because he's quite insightful when anyone bothers asking him his opinion. He eventually gets into Oxford through his rugby prowess - and family connections.
Timms - James Corden
[Anne of Cleves] was the one they told [Henry VIII] was Miss Dish, only when she turned up, she had a face like the wrong end of a camel's turd.
Timms is the class clown. Well, everyone has their little witty moments, but Timms is particularly smart-alecky. If Hector is whacking one of the boys with a book, it's probably Timms. He also dives into Hector's roleplaying tomfoolery with particular relish.
Lockwood - Andrew Knott
Is nothing sacred, sir? We're shocked!
Lockwood's a bit more aggressively boyish than the rest, and more likely to make the sort of jokes that sting or play off racial/religious stereotypes. But it's all in a good old boys sort of way, not mean-spirited. He's also probably the poorest of the lot (not that any of these boys are upper-class) - he works as a milkman to earn money and wears trainers to his Cambridge interview. In the epilogue, we learn that he joined the army to pay his way through college, and was killed by friendly fire at age 28 - which is very important in fandom, as his funeral is often the excuse authors use to reunite the other characters. So at least he dies in good service to slash.
Akthar - Sacha Dhawan
Do you exist on an unhealthy diet of takeaway food, sir, or do you whisk up gourmet meals for one?
Akthar seems particularly clever, and is clearly a popular friend to all the others - he's got more shots with his arm slung around each of the other boys than anyone else - but we don't really know much more about him. He's Muslim, which he likes using as an excuse to barb Christianity. He's a nice guy. And he's quite cute, so he occasionally turns up in slash fics just for the hell of it.
Crowther - Samuel Anderson
Yeah, you all look alike to me anyway.
Crowther tends to fade into the background - impressive, really, given how very hot he is. He's just not as outspoken as the others, I guess. He says he's keen on acting, but he isn't given much of a personality otherwise. He mostly seems a bit stand-offish, like he finds the other boys' constant posturing just a touch immature. Which, in fairness, they are. On the plus side, the fact that Crowther's a bit of a blank slate means fic authors can do whatever they damn well want with him.
THE ADULTS
Hector - Richard Griffiths
Pass the parcel. That's sometimes all you can do. Take it, feel it and pass it on. Not for me, not for you, but for someone, somewhere, one day. Pass it on, boys.
Hector teaches General Studies at Cutlers', although as he says, "There is no such thing as 'general studies'. Knowledge is not general, it is specific." In his class, the boys memorize a lot of poetry, expand their French by acting out scenes set in brothels, learn lots of silly songs, and perform "endings" from old movies in the hopes of finding one Hector doesn't recognize. "Sheer, calculated silliness" is Hector's ultimate goal. He's eccentric, lonely, somewhat ridiculous, and overall a genuinely sympathetic old guy.
Timms: Housman! Wasn't he a nancy, sir?
Hector: Foul, festering, grubby-minded little trollop! Do not use that word!
Timms: But you use it, sir!
Hector: I do, sir, I know, but I am far gone in age and decrepitude.
He manages to be both a stock figure and a maverick, and the Headmaster longs to get rid of him because his results aren't "quantifiable." Hector also has an unfortunate tradition of giving the older boys lifts on his motorbike - and giving them a little grope along the way. Despite this kind of sketchy quirk, the boys are all immensely fond of and loyal to Hector. Of course, he eventually gets caught, finally giving the Headmaster a good excuse to fire him - or, rather, to strongly encourage his early retirement at the end of the term.
Thanks to some scheming (read: blackmailing the Headmaster) of Dakin's, Hector doesn't actually lose his job. But on the last day of term, he dies in a motorbike accident. So Hector doesn't make a physical appearance in many fics, but his presence is always felt - he really did shape the lives of these boys.
Irwin - Stephen Campbell Moore
What's truth got to do with it? What's truth got to do with anything?
Tom Irwin, Oxford graduate, is very slick, very shrewd, and can spin a fact like nobody's business. He's a temporary contract teacher hired for the sole purpose of getting these boys into Oxbridge, whatever it takes. They've already got the history side down, so his focus is presentation: how to make their recitations of the facts less deadly dull. In particular, he encourages them to give the history an original spin - like, say, writing in defense of Stalin or Hitler. He also tries convincing them to apply Hector's fluff and quotations to their exams - "a gobbet like that's the perfect way to end it" - much to Hector's disgust.
Dakin: I don't understand this. Reckless, impulsive, immoral - how come there's such a difference between the way you teach and the way you live? Why are you so bold when it comes to argument and talking but when it comes to the point, when it's something that's actually happening - I mean now you're so fucking careful.
Irwin's personal life, however, is nothing like his lessons. He's actually incredibly insecure. Partly because he's quite young - as Scripps remarks, "he's only five minutes older than us" - but also, as we eventually learn, he lies as much about his own life as he encourages the boys to do about history. He never actually went to Oxford, just got his teaching diploma there, and doesn't think too highly of himself in any regard: "I'm not clever enough. I'm not anything enough, really." And, of course, he's gay, and has a raging hard-on for one of his students - Dakin. Which, given Hector's little scandal, he's particularly ashamed about.
Fortunately, he's clever enough to accept Dakin's proposition at the end, after some goading (it helps that Dakin's no longer technically his student by then), but as previously mentioned, they never follow through. Irwin is on the motorbike with Hector when they have their accident, and though Irwin survives, well, the whole drinks-with-Dakin thing falls to the wayside, what with hospitals and funerals and all. In the play, Irwin is more or less wheelchair-bound for the rest of his life; in the film, this isn't specified, and he attends Hector's funeral only on crutches. Most fics assume that he at least mostly loses the use of his legs in the accident, though not to the paraplegic extreme. Personal injury aside, he goes on to have a brilliant career as a television historian - it's more journalism than history, of course.
Mrs. Lintott - Frances de la Tour
Can you, for a moment, imagine how depressing it is to teach five centuries of masculine ineptitude?
Dorothy Lintott is the world-weary, cynical, and dryly hilarious history teacher who's been filling the boys' heads with actual facts for years now. We don't get to see much of her classes - what's the fun in yet another essay on the dissolution of the monasteries? - but she serves as a caring, if somewhat distant, mentor for the history boys - particularly Rudge, although they're all quite fond of her. She's also our primary insight into the politics of the education system, as she wryly suffers through the Headmaster's bureaucracy, Hector's eccentricities, and Irwin's attempts to shake up the system. She's quite close to Hector, and befriends Irwin early on.
Hector: Dakin's a good-looking boy, though somehow sad.
Mrs. Lintott: You always think they're sad, Hector. Every, every time. Actually I wouldn't have said he was sad. I would have said he was cunt-struck.
Hector: Dorothy!
Mrs. Lintott: I'd have thought you'd have liked that. It's a compound adjective. You like compound adjectives.
Yeah, we all like Totty quite a lot, dry old bird that she is. Doesn't show up in fic too often, which is a pity.
The Headmaster (Felix) - Clive Merrison
We're low in the league. I want to see us up there with Manchester Grammar, Haberdasher Askes, Leighton Park...or is that an open prison?
The Headmaster is everything wrong with the educational system today. All he cares about are results - and by results, I mean getting-as-many-boys-into-Oxbridge-as-possible. He couldn't care less about the boys themselves. He's also not particularly bright. And he's got the hots for his young secretary, Fiona, which is all kinds of sketchy. Dakin blackmails him into keeping on Hector as a teacher, because as he says, "what's the difference between Mr. Hector touching us up on the bike and your feeling up Fiona?" It's a good point. Basically, Felix is the villain of the play/film, although as villains go, he's more annoying than scary.
Fiona - Georgia Taylor
Worth mentioning, because she does sleep with Dakin, lucky bint. The Headmaster's secretary. Actually quite a bright girl in her own right, though we don't get to see nearly enough of her. I like Fiona. She manages Dakin very effectively.
There are also Wilkes, the abrasively religious phys ed teacher, and Mrs. Bibby, the much put-upon art teacher, but no one seems to care much for them. Each are entertaining in their own special ways, though.
THE FANDOM
The History Boys is quite a small fandom, but reasonably active, and given how witty and intellectual the canon is, the quality of the fic produced is also quite high. And, okay, this fandom is tailor-made for slashers. You've got three canonically gay characters and one very pretty boy who's openly willing to play for both teams. And the other boys are all exceedingly slashable as well. It is a good fandom to play in.
Popular pairings include:
Dakin/Irwin
Irwin: I didn't know you were that way inclined.
Dakin: I'm not, but it's the end of term; I've got into Oxford; I though we might push the boat out.
Because goddamnit, they deserve to get that drink someday.
Dakin/Posner
Posner: Is that [hug] it? The longed-for moment?
Dakin: Well, what's wrong with it?
Posner: It's too fucking brief! I was looking for something more...lingering.
Posner gets his "longed-for moment" at the end of the film, a good long lingering hug/grope from his beloved Dakin, but surely he can do better than that!
Dakin/Scripps
Scripps: It's what you don't do.
Dakin: You don't not wank? Jesus, you're headed for the bin.
Scripps: It's not forever.
Dakin: Yeah? Well, tell me on the big day and I'll stand well back.
It's not all that great a stretch to imagine that Dakin's reserved best friend is secretly crushing on him, and Scripps makes more than his fair share of slashy remarks over the course of the film.
Posner/Scripps
Scripps: Love can be very irritating.
Posner: How do you know?
Scripps: That's what I always think about God. Must get so pissed off, everybody adoring him all the time.
Posner: Yes, only you don't catch God poncing about in his underpants.
My personal favorite, because they're both so awesome, and once Posner realizes that Dakin's not worth the effort and Scripps finally decides to act on his feelings...it's gonna be hot.
Those are the pairings I've stumbled across most often, but really, the combinations are endless. It's gonna be a good month of recs, people.
RESOURCES:
The History Boys at IMDB
drinkswithdakin - the fic community
Yuletide gave us several fantastic THB fics last year, and hopefully will provide a few more this year as well.
Anything important I've left out? Let me know!
How do I define history? It's just one fucking thing after another.
So in 2004, Alan Bennett writes a play that gets produced in London. Lots of people think it's incredibly spiffy, and it wins a bunch of awards. Eventually the production makes its way over to New York, where even more people fall in love with it and it wins even more awards. Fortunately, Bennett and his producers had the foresight to turn the play into a screenplay and film it - with the entire original cast - so that those of us who missed out when it was onstage could see it on the big screen, fall in love with it, and then obsess over the DVD.
Thus, The History Boys fandom was born.
The film version cuts a bit out of the play, but doesn't change any of the essentials, so for all practical purposes, the canon is the same for both movie and play.
Spoiler warning: nearly all of the fic in this fandom is set post-canon, so to read fic is basically to be spoiled for crucial plot points. Also, I have a thing for quotes, because the writing of this play/movie is just so damn good.
THE (spoiler-free) PLOT
Your A-Level results are the best we've ever had, and they demand that you return for an extra term to work for the examination for our ancient universities.
Set in Yorkshire in 1983, an unruly but brilliant group of sixth-form history students - the history boys - at Cutlers' Grammar School frantically prepare for the Oxford and Cambridge entrance examinations. In the process, they find themselves caught between two teachers with wildly contrasting styles: Hector, the inspiring old eccentric, who believes in knowledge for its own sake, and Irwin, the shrewd, slick young upstart, who teaches every aggressive trick and journalistic spin imaginable, emphasizing originality over truth. They've still got Mrs. Lintott to teach them the actual history, but she can hardly compete with Hector's charming peculiarities or Irwin's engaging lies. But at least she's not the one feeling up her pupils...
Add sex, egos, accidents, and occasionally even history into the mix, and you get a rather hectic term.
THE BOYS
Dakin - Dominic Cooper
I was thinking the half-smile, with just a hint of sadness...
Stuart Dakin is the school Lothario. He is made of sex. It's kind of hard to describe this, because you really do have to see him in action to fully appreciate it. He's currently sleeping with the Headmaster's secretary, has half the boys in love with him, and is working on seducing the new teacher, Irwin. He claims to be heterosexual, but really, once you've explicitly propositioned your male teacher for a blow-job, you're only kidding yourself. He's also very much a teenage boy, and fumbles nearly as often as he scores, especially with Irwin, whom he genuinely wants to impress, not just seduce. But he matures (well, somewhat) over the course of the play/film, and by the end, it's clear he's set to take over the world. According to the epilogue, he goes on to become a fantastically rich tax lawyer - although whether or not he's happy is up for debate.
Dakin: I'm just kicking the tyres on this one but, further to the drink, what I was really wondering was whether there were any circumstances in which there was any chance of your sucking me off. Or something similar. Actually, that would please Hector.
Irwin: What?
Dakin: "Your sucking me off." It's a gerund. He likes gerunds. And "your being scared shitless," that's another gerund.
If you're reading a slash fic in this fandom, odds are incredibly good that Dakin is one of the key players. At the end of the film, he asks Irwin out for a drink and a blow-job, but it never actually happens, so there's a lot of delayed gratification fic out there for those two. And then there's the thing with Posner…
Posner - Samuel Barnett
I'm a Jew, I'm small, I'm homosexual, and I live in Sheffield. I'm fucked.
David Posner is in many ways the youngest of the boys, although whether he's actually younger or just went through puberty way late isn't made clear. He's confused about his sexuality (at least at the start), he doesn't understand a lot of the more sexually-charged references the other boys make, and he seems to trail behind the others in several ways. But he's also very bright intellectually, and somehow seems emotionally wiser than his friends. And, of course, he's madly in love with Dakin.
Scripps: Oh, Pos, with your spaniel heart. It will pass.
Posner: Yes, it's a phase. Who says I want it to pass? But the pain, the pain.
Scripps: Hector would say it's the only education worth having.
Posner: I just wish there were marks for it.
It's hard to watch this film without falling in love with Posner. Only he could make teenage angst adorable instead of irritating. And he sings "Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered" to Dakin in front of the entire class. Posner is kind of awesome. He's also the only boy who really takes Hector's lessons to heart, and winds up a schoolteacher himself.
Scripps - Jamie Parker
The things I do for Jesus.
Don Scripps is Dakin's closest friend, and often Posner's confidante. He's just a generally friendly, likeable, compassionate chap. He plays the piano quite well, which is a plus in Hector's class. He's also by far the most religious of the bunch, but in a long-suffering sort of way, and not in the least bit self-righteous or preachy. He prays before exams and college interviews, corrects teachers on points of scripture, and, well, doesn't wank.
Dakin: I just wanted to say thank you.
Scripps: So? Give him a subscription to The Spectator or a box of Black Magic. Just because you've got a scholarship doesn't mean you've got to give him unfettered access to your dick.
Dakin: So how would you say thank you?
Scripps: Same as you probably. On my knees.
Scripps gets a lot of enjoyment listening to tales of Dakin's conquests and sympathizing with Posner's unrequited love, but much as he loves other people's stories (he even grows up to become a journalist), he never actually goes out and does anything for himself. Fic authors seem to love finally giving Scripps the chance to take action - usually by hooking him up with Posner or Dakin.
Rudge - Russell Tovey
I may not know much about Jean-Paul Sartre, but I have a handicap of four!
Rudge is the dumb jock of the group. Of course, being relatively thick in comparison to the rest of these boys still makes him fairly bright. He's far more interested in rugby and golf than in history, and is only really interested in getting into Oxbridge because all of his friends are. Everyone - including his teachers and particularly the Headmaster - underestimates Rudge. Which is a pity, because he's quite insightful when anyone bothers asking him his opinion. He eventually gets into Oxford through his rugby prowess - and family connections.
Timms - James Corden
[Anne of Cleves] was the one they told [Henry VIII] was Miss Dish, only when she turned up, she had a face like the wrong end of a camel's turd.
Timms is the class clown. Well, everyone has their little witty moments, but Timms is particularly smart-alecky. If Hector is whacking one of the boys with a book, it's probably Timms. He also dives into Hector's roleplaying tomfoolery with particular relish.
Lockwood - Andrew Knott
Is nothing sacred, sir? We're shocked!
Lockwood's a bit more aggressively boyish than the rest, and more likely to make the sort of jokes that sting or play off racial/religious stereotypes. But it's all in a good old boys sort of way, not mean-spirited. He's also probably the poorest of the lot (not that any of these boys are upper-class) - he works as a milkman to earn money and wears trainers to his Cambridge interview. In the epilogue, we learn that he joined the army to pay his way through college, and was killed by friendly fire at age 28 - which is very important in fandom, as his funeral is often the excuse authors use to reunite the other characters. So at least he dies in good service to slash.
Akthar - Sacha Dhawan
Do you exist on an unhealthy diet of takeaway food, sir, or do you whisk up gourmet meals for one?
Akthar seems particularly clever, and is clearly a popular friend to all the others - he's got more shots with his arm slung around each of the other boys than anyone else - but we don't really know much more about him. He's Muslim, which he likes using as an excuse to barb Christianity. He's a nice guy. And he's quite cute, so he occasionally turns up in slash fics just for the hell of it.
Crowther - Samuel Anderson
Yeah, you all look alike to me anyway.
Crowther tends to fade into the background - impressive, really, given how very hot he is. He's just not as outspoken as the others, I guess. He says he's keen on acting, but he isn't given much of a personality otherwise. He mostly seems a bit stand-offish, like he finds the other boys' constant posturing just a touch immature. Which, in fairness, they are. On the plus side, the fact that Crowther's a bit of a blank slate means fic authors can do whatever they damn well want with him.
THE ADULTS
Hector - Richard Griffiths
Pass the parcel. That's sometimes all you can do. Take it, feel it and pass it on. Not for me, not for you, but for someone, somewhere, one day. Pass it on, boys.
Hector teaches General Studies at Cutlers', although as he says, "There is no such thing as 'general studies'. Knowledge is not general, it is specific." In his class, the boys memorize a lot of poetry, expand their French by acting out scenes set in brothels, learn lots of silly songs, and perform "endings" from old movies in the hopes of finding one Hector doesn't recognize. "Sheer, calculated silliness" is Hector's ultimate goal. He's eccentric, lonely, somewhat ridiculous, and overall a genuinely sympathetic old guy.
Timms: Housman! Wasn't he a nancy, sir?
Hector: Foul, festering, grubby-minded little trollop! Do not use that word!
Timms: But you use it, sir!
Hector: I do, sir, I know, but I am far gone in age and decrepitude.
He manages to be both a stock figure and a maverick, and the Headmaster longs to get rid of him because his results aren't "quantifiable." Hector also has an unfortunate tradition of giving the older boys lifts on his motorbike - and giving them a little grope along the way. Despite this kind of sketchy quirk, the boys are all immensely fond of and loyal to Hector. Of course, he eventually gets caught, finally giving the Headmaster a good excuse to fire him - or, rather, to strongly encourage his early retirement at the end of the term.
Thanks to some scheming (read: blackmailing the Headmaster) of Dakin's, Hector doesn't actually lose his job. But on the last day of term, he dies in a motorbike accident. So Hector doesn't make a physical appearance in many fics, but his presence is always felt - he really did shape the lives of these boys.
Irwin - Stephen Campbell Moore
What's truth got to do with it? What's truth got to do with anything?
Tom Irwin, Oxford graduate, is very slick, very shrewd, and can spin a fact like nobody's business. He's a temporary contract teacher hired for the sole purpose of getting these boys into Oxbridge, whatever it takes. They've already got the history side down, so his focus is presentation: how to make their recitations of the facts less deadly dull. In particular, he encourages them to give the history an original spin - like, say, writing in defense of Stalin or Hitler. He also tries convincing them to apply Hector's fluff and quotations to their exams - "a gobbet like that's the perfect way to end it" - much to Hector's disgust.
Dakin: I don't understand this. Reckless, impulsive, immoral - how come there's such a difference between the way you teach and the way you live? Why are you so bold when it comes to argument and talking but when it comes to the point, when it's something that's actually happening - I mean now you're so fucking careful.
Irwin's personal life, however, is nothing like his lessons. He's actually incredibly insecure. Partly because he's quite young - as Scripps remarks, "he's only five minutes older than us" - but also, as we eventually learn, he lies as much about his own life as he encourages the boys to do about history. He never actually went to Oxford, just got his teaching diploma there, and doesn't think too highly of himself in any regard: "I'm not clever enough. I'm not anything enough, really." And, of course, he's gay, and has a raging hard-on for one of his students - Dakin. Which, given Hector's little scandal, he's particularly ashamed about.
Fortunately, he's clever enough to accept Dakin's proposition at the end, after some goading (it helps that Dakin's no longer technically his student by then), but as previously mentioned, they never follow through. Irwin is on the motorbike with Hector when they have their accident, and though Irwin survives, well, the whole drinks-with-Dakin thing falls to the wayside, what with hospitals and funerals and all. In the play, Irwin is more or less wheelchair-bound for the rest of his life; in the film, this isn't specified, and he attends Hector's funeral only on crutches. Most fics assume that he at least mostly loses the use of his legs in the accident, though not to the paraplegic extreme. Personal injury aside, he goes on to have a brilliant career as a television historian - it's more journalism than history, of course.
Mrs. Lintott - Frances de la Tour
Can you, for a moment, imagine how depressing it is to teach five centuries of masculine ineptitude?
Dorothy Lintott is the world-weary, cynical, and dryly hilarious history teacher who's been filling the boys' heads with actual facts for years now. We don't get to see much of her classes - what's the fun in yet another essay on the dissolution of the monasteries? - but she serves as a caring, if somewhat distant, mentor for the history boys - particularly Rudge, although they're all quite fond of her. She's also our primary insight into the politics of the education system, as she wryly suffers through the Headmaster's bureaucracy, Hector's eccentricities, and Irwin's attempts to shake up the system. She's quite close to Hector, and befriends Irwin early on.
Hector: Dakin's a good-looking boy, though somehow sad.
Mrs. Lintott: You always think they're sad, Hector. Every, every time. Actually I wouldn't have said he was sad. I would have said he was cunt-struck.
Hector: Dorothy!
Mrs. Lintott: I'd have thought you'd have liked that. It's a compound adjective. You like compound adjectives.
Yeah, we all like Totty quite a lot, dry old bird that she is. Doesn't show up in fic too often, which is a pity.
The Headmaster (Felix) - Clive Merrison
We're low in the league. I want to see us up there with Manchester Grammar, Haberdasher Askes, Leighton Park...or is that an open prison?
The Headmaster is everything wrong with the educational system today. All he cares about are results - and by results, I mean getting-as-many-boys-into-Oxbridge-as-possible. He couldn't care less about the boys themselves. He's also not particularly bright. And he's got the hots for his young secretary, Fiona, which is all kinds of sketchy. Dakin blackmails him into keeping on Hector as a teacher, because as he says, "what's the difference between Mr. Hector touching us up on the bike and your feeling up Fiona?" It's a good point. Basically, Felix is the villain of the play/film, although as villains go, he's more annoying than scary.
Fiona - Georgia Taylor
Worth mentioning, because she does sleep with Dakin, lucky bint. The Headmaster's secretary. Actually quite a bright girl in her own right, though we don't get to see nearly enough of her. I like Fiona. She manages Dakin very effectively.
There are also Wilkes, the abrasively religious phys ed teacher, and Mrs. Bibby, the much put-upon art teacher, but no one seems to care much for them. Each are entertaining in their own special ways, though.
THE FANDOM
The History Boys is quite a small fandom, but reasonably active, and given how witty and intellectual the canon is, the quality of the fic produced is also quite high. And, okay, this fandom is tailor-made for slashers. You've got three canonically gay characters and one very pretty boy who's openly willing to play for both teams. And the other boys are all exceedingly slashable as well. It is a good fandom to play in.
Popular pairings include:
Dakin/Irwin
Irwin: I didn't know you were that way inclined.
Dakin: I'm not, but it's the end of term; I've got into Oxford; I though we might push the boat out.
Because goddamnit, they deserve to get that drink someday.
Dakin/Posner
Posner: Is that [hug] it? The longed-for moment?
Dakin: Well, what's wrong with it?
Posner: It's too fucking brief! I was looking for something more...lingering.
Posner gets his "longed-for moment" at the end of the film, a good long lingering hug/grope from his beloved Dakin, but surely he can do better than that!
Dakin/Scripps
Scripps: It's what you don't do.
Dakin: You don't not wank? Jesus, you're headed for the bin.
Scripps: It's not forever.
Dakin: Yeah? Well, tell me on the big day and I'll stand well back.
It's not all that great a stretch to imagine that Dakin's reserved best friend is secretly crushing on him, and Scripps makes more than his fair share of slashy remarks over the course of the film.
Posner/Scripps
Scripps: Love can be very irritating.
Posner: How do you know?
Scripps: That's what I always think about God. Must get so pissed off, everybody adoring him all the time.
Posner: Yes, only you don't catch God poncing about in his underpants.
My personal favorite, because they're both so awesome, and once Posner realizes that Dakin's not worth the effort and Scripps finally decides to act on his feelings...it's gonna be hot.
Those are the pairings I've stumbled across most often, but really, the combinations are endless. It's gonna be a good month of recs, people.
RESOURCES:
The History Boys at IMDB
drinkswithdakin - the fic community
Yuletide gave us several fantastic THB fics last year, and hopefully will provide a few more this year as well.
Anything important I've left out? Let me know!