Alan Bennett on The History Boys

Britain's best-loved living dramatist is joined by actors Richard Griffiths and James Corden to discuss the autobiographical elements of his school-set play and film, and explain the importance of insults.

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"Leeds back then was very black and sooty," says Alan Bennett. "When I first went to Cambridge, it just seemed like something out of a fairy story. It just looked so wonderful."

Though these words might not be altogether loyal to the city of his birth, Bennett has done more than most to put northern England, and Leeds in particular, on the map. With a few notable exceptions, his plays, monologues, screenplays and novels are distinctively northern. The History Boys is no different, telling as it does the tale of seven working class northern sixth formers who are studying for places at Oxbridge. Bennett admits that the story has its roots in his own life.

"I went to Leeds Modern, a state school, and they didn't normally send students to Oxford or Cambridge, although it did often send pupils to Leeds University. But the headmaster happened to have gone to Cambridge and half a dozen of us tried and we all eventually got in."

"It wasn't the Holy Grail," he says, "in the sense that I'd never been to Oxford or Cambridge. Also, unlike in the play, the masters at my school had no idea what was expected of us during the entrance exam so we just had to busk it, really."

Next page • "It's like having a picture in you're head of a place you've never been, and then going there in real life and having that picture wiped out by reality"