- Hector: The best moments in reading are when you come across something - a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things - that you'd thought special, particular to you. And here it is, set down by someone else, a person you've never met, maybe even someone long dead. And it's as if a hand has come out, and taken yours.
- Mrs. Lintott: History is a commentary on the various and continuing incapabilities of men. What is history? History is women following behind with the bucket.
- Hector: 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. That's the game I want you to learn. Pass it on.
- Headmaster: There's a vacancy in history.
- Tom Irwin: [Thoughtfully] That's very true.
- Headmaster: In the school.
- Tom Irwin: Ah.
- [in an art-appreciation lesson, discussing the nudes of Michaelangelo]
- Timms: These aren't women. They're just men with tits. And the tits look as if they've been put on with an ice-cream scoop!
- Tom Irwin: The truth was, in 1914, Germany doesn't want war. Yeah, there's an arms race, but it's Britain who's leading it. So, why does no one admit this?
- [approaching a war memorial]
- Tom Irwin: That's why. The dead. The body count. We don't like to admit the war was even partly our fault cos so many of our people died. And all the mourning's veiled the truth. It's not "lest we forget", it's "lest we remember". That's what all this is about -the memorials, the Cenotaph, the two minutes' silence-. Because there is no better way of forgetting something than by commemorating it.
- [at a mock interview for entrance to an Oxford college]
- Tom Irwin: Um, Rudge...
- Mrs. Lintott: Now. How do you define history Mr. Rudge?
- Rudge: Can I speak freely, Miss? Without being hit?
- Mrs. Lintott: I will protect you.
- Rudge: How do I define history? It's just one fuckin' thing after another.
- [raucous laughter from the other students, but the interview board is appalled]
- Mrs. Lintott: I see. And why do you want to come to Christ Church?
- Rudge: It's the one I thought I might get into.
- Mrs. Lintott: Can you, for a moment, imagine how depressing it is to teach five centuries of masculine ineptitude?
- Timms: You've got crap handwriting, sir!
- Tom Irwin: It's your eyesight that's bad, and we know what that's caused by.
- Timms: Sir! Is that a coded reference to the mythical dangers of self-abuse?
- Tom Irwin: Possibly. It might even be a joke.
- Dakin: A joke, sir. Oh. Are jokes going to be a feature, sir? We need to know as it affects our mindset.
- [talking about the Holocaust]
- Posner: But to put something in context is a step towards saying it can be understood and that it can be explained. And if it can be explained that it can be explained away.
- Mrs. Lintott: 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.
- [Timms is trying to duck out of Athletics]
- Wilkes: What's the matter with you, lad?
- Timms: I've got a note.
- Wilkes: How much for?
- [laughs]
- Wilkes: I don't *do* notes! Get changed!
- Timms: Sir...
- Wilkes: God doesn't do notes, either. Did Jesus Christ say, "Can I be excused the Crucifixion?" No!
- Scripps: Actually, sir, I think he *did*...
- Wilkes: One day it will save your life.
- Posner: Nothing saves anyone's life sir. It just postpones their death.
- [Wilkes puts his hands on Posner's shoulders]
- Wilkes: Jesus Christ will save your life, lad, if you only let him into your heart!
- Posner: I'm Jewish, sir.
- [Wilkes moves instead to put his hands on Akhtar's shoulders]
- Akthar: I'm Muslim, sir.
- [talking about Tom Irwin]
- Headmaster: He comes highly-recommended.
- Mrs. Lintott: So did Anne of Cleves.
- Headmaster: Who? He's up-to-the-minute, more "now".
- Mrs. Lintott: [dryly] Now? I thought history was "then".
- Headmaster: Ah, Irwin! Splendid news!
- [pops the cork of a bottle of champagne]
- Headmaster: Splendid news! Posner a scholarship! Dakin an exhibition! And places for everybody else!
- [cops a feel of Fiona's bum]
- Headmaster: It's... it's more then one could have ever hoped for! Irwin you are to be congratulated! A remarkable achievement! Oh and, you too, you too Dorothy of course, you, ah, laid the foundation.
- Mrs. Lintott: Not Rudge headmaster.
- Headmaster: Not Rudge. Oh, dear.
- Tom Irwin: He said nothing, the others have all had letters.
- Headmaster: There's always an outside chance. It's a pity, it would have been good to have a clean swoop.
- [Rudge appears at the door, but only seen by Mrs. Lintott]
- Headmaster: Still as I've said all along, you can't polish a turd.
- Mrs. Lintott: [Rudge leaves and Mrs. Lintott takes after him down the hallway] Rudge!
- [Rudge stops and turns around]
- Mrs. Lintott: You haven't heard from Oxford?
- [Rudge shakes his head]
- Mrs. Lintott: Perhaps you'll hear tomorrow.
- Rudge: Why should I? They told me when I was there.
- Mrs. Lintott: I'm sorry.
- Rudge: What for? I got in.
- Mrs. Lintott: How come?
- Rudge: How come they told me, or how come they took a thick sod like me?... I had family connections.
- Mrs. Lintott: [incredulously] Somebody in your family went to Christ Church?
- Rudge: In a manner of speaking, my Dad, before he got married he was a college servant there. This old, parson, who just been sitting there most of the interview, suddenly said was I related to Bill Rudge who was a scout in staircase seven in the ninety-fifties. So, said he was my Dad, and they said I was the kind of candidate they were looking for. Mind you I did do the other stuff, like Stalin was a sweetie and Wilfred Owen was a wuss. They said I was plainly someone who thought for himself, and exactly what the college rugger team needed.
- Mrs. Lintott: Are you not pleased?
- Rudge: It's not like winning a match.
- Mrs. Lintott: Durham was very good for history. It's where I had my first pizza. Other things too, of course, but it's the pizza that stands out.
- Headmaster: So the upshot is I am glad he handled his pupils' balls because at least that I can categorise.
- Scripps: No more genital massage as one speeds along leafy suburban roads. No more the bike's melancholy long withdrawing roar as he dropped you at the corner, your honour still intact.
- Dakin: Don't think we're shocked by your mentioning the word "foreskin," sir.
- Crowther: No, sir. Some of us even have them.
- Lockwood: Not Posner though, 'cause he's, well, Jewish. It's one of several things he doesn't have.
- Posner: Fuck off.
- Lockwood: That's not racist, though.
- Crowther: No?
- Lockwood: It's race-related... but not racist.
- Wilkes: You're letting yourself down. You're letting God down.
- Lockwood: What's God got to do with it?
- Wilkes: Listen, boy. This isn't your body.
- Lockwood: No?
- Wilkes: This body is on loan to you from God.
- Lockwood: Fuck me!
- Wilkes: I heard that. Give me twenty.
- Lockwood: Twenty what, Hail Marys?
- Wilkes: Do it.
- Headmaster: Fuck the Ren-ai-ssance! And fuck literature, and Plato, and Michaelangelo, and Oscar Wilde, and all the other shrunken violets you people line up. This is a school, and it isn't normal!
- [Scripps is taking the mick out of Dakin for trying to please Irwin too much]
- Scripps: Have you looked at your handwriting recently? You're beginning to write like him!
- [turns to look at Posner's essay]
- Scripps: You're writin' like 'im an' all!
- Posner: I am not! Dakin writes like him, I write like Dakin.
- Tom Irwin: But this is History. Distance yourselves. Our perspective on the past alters. Looking back, immediately in front of us is dead ground. We don't see it, and because we don't see it this means that there is no period so remote as the recent past. And one of the historian's jobs is to anticipate what our perspective of that period will be... even on the Holocaust.
- 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.
- Tom Irwin: What?
- Dakin: "Your sucking me off". It's a gerund. He likes gerunds. And "your being scared shitless", that's another gerund.
- Dakin: How do you think history happens?
- Tom Irwin: What?
- Dakin: How does stuff happen, do you think? People decide to do stuff. Make moves. Alter things.
- Tom Irwin: I'm not sure what you're talking about.
- Dakin: No? Think about it.
- Tom Irwin: Some do... make moves, I suppose. Others react to events. In 1939 Hitler made a move on Poland. Poland defended itself.
- Dakin: ...gave in.
- Tom Irwin: Is that what you mean?
- Dakin: No. Not Poland anyway. Was Poland taken by surprise?
- Tom Irwin: To some extent. Though they knew something was up.
- Dakin: Next week? Get this man - "You can suck me off next week"! I've heard of a busy schedule but this is ridiculous. God, we've got a long way to go. Do you ever take your glasses off?
- Tom Irwin: Why?
- Dakin: It's a start.
- Tom Irwin: Not with me. Taking off my glasses is the last thing I do.
- Dakin: Yeh? I'll look forward to it.