Poetry

Rupert Brooke’s The Soldier (1915)

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I recent­ly stayed for a few days in the charm­ing vil­lage of Red­mar­ley d’Abitot in Glouces­ter­shire and when research­ing the local area was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised to find that the near­by vil­lage of Dymock was sig­nif­i­cant in poet­ry cir­cles for being the home of the epony­mous Dymock Poets (as well as being the home of the Dymock Red cider apple and also Stink­ing Bish­op cheese!). A vis­it ensued and in its church of St Mary’s I found a dis­play about the Dymock Poets and learnt a bit more.

They were a lit­er­ary group of poets who lived in or around Dymock, or vis­it­ed often, and were active in the peri­od from 1911 to the First World War. Cen­tred around Las­celles Abercrombie’s house The Gal­lows, in near­by Ryton (that I sub­se­quent­ly vis­it­ed and had a nice chat with the cur­rent own­er who told me she gets plen­ty of Amer­i­can and Chi­nese lit­er­ary tourists), the group com­prised Aber­crom­bie, Robert Frost (whose poem The Road Not Tak­en I wrote about here), Rupert Brooke, Edward Thomas, Wil­frid Wil­son Gib­son and John Drinkwa­ter.

The group pub­lished their own quar­ter­ly, titled New Num­bers, and it was in this that we first saw Rupert Brooke’s The Sol­dier pub­lished: a poem which was to gain world­wide fame for its sim­ple and affect­ing ‘noble fall­en sol­dier’ motif, and be recit­ed in a thou­sand-fold war memo­ri­als. Whilst a lot of war poet­ry such as Wil­frid Owen’s Dulce et Deco­rum Est (also blogged about, here) had a dis­cernibly real­is­tic view of war, Brooke’s The Sol­dier was dia­met­ri­cal­ly oppo­site: a roman­ti­cised and  sen­ti­men­tal view, speak­ing in unabashed tones of pride, courage, and sac­ri­fice. It was writ­ten near the start of the First World War, per­haps before Brookes had time to sam­ple the bru­tal real­i­ties of bat­tle.

Indeed, he nev­er would: sail­ing with the British Mediter­ranean Expe­di­tionary Force on its way to the Gal­lipoli land­ings in 1915, he devel­oped strep­to­coc­cal sep­sis from an infect­ed mos­qui­to bite and, whilst moored off the Greek island of Sky­ros, died of sep­ti­caemia on 23rd April . As the expe­di­tionary force had orders to depart imme­di­ate­ly, Brooke was buried in an sim­ple olive grove on Sky­ros. It makes the open­ing lines of his poem all the more poignant.

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some cor­ner of a for­eign field
That is for ever Eng­land. There shall be
In that rich earth a rich­er dust con­cealed;
A dust whom Eng­land bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flow­ers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of Eng­land’s, breath­ing Eng­lish air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eter­nal mind, no less
Gives some­where back the thoughts by Eng­land giv­en;
Her sights and sounds; dreams hap­py as her day;
And laugh­ter, learnt of friends; and gen­tle­ness,
In hearts at peace, under an Eng­lish heav­en.

Rupert Brooke
Film, TV, and Theatre

Key and Peele’s Substitute Teacher sketches (2012)

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I came across the com­e­dy duo Key & Peele just pri­or to Jor­dan Peele’s direc­to­r­i­al career blow­ing up with the release of his films Get Out (2017), Us (2019) and, just last month, Nope. I have seen the first two of those movies, and they are intrigu­ing, slick psy­cho­log­i­cal hor­ror films, but it’s his com­e­dy with part­ner Kee­gan-Michael Key that inter­ests us here. The two first worked togeth­er on Amer­i­can sketch com­e­dy series Mad TV but broke out with their own series on Com­e­dy Cen­tral.

Key and Peele are black Amer­i­cans and their sketch­es often focus on eth­nic stereo­types and social awk­ward­ness in race rela­tions but they are very fun­ny with it, and no more so than in their two Sub­sti­tute Teacher sketch­es. In these, Key plays Mr Gar­vey, an angry and intim­i­dat­ing sub­sti­tute teacher and vet­er­an of inner-city school­ing, who has come to teach a class of white, mild-man­nered sub­ur­ban stu­dents.

Since Mr Gar­vey is pre­sum­ably used to teach­ing kids with first names hav­ing every spelling and pro­nun­ci­a­tion under the sun, he strug­gles with the reg­u­lar spellings and pro­nun­ci­a­tions of these white kids’ names: when tak­ing the class roll he pro­nounces Jacque­line as “Jay-kwellin”, Blake as “Balarkay”, Denise as “Dee-nice” and Aaron as “A‑A-Ron”. Any attempt­ed cor­rec­tion is seen as an affront and there’s no way he’s going to take it, so he forces them to acknowl­edge them­selves by his incor­rect pro­nun­ci­a­tions and threat­ens to send them to Prin­ci­pal O’Shaughnessy’s office (whose name he pro­nounces “O‑Shag-hen­nessy”).

The con­cept of Sub­sti­tute Teacher is very clever and Key absolute­ly nails his char­ac­ter. With excel­lent con­tri­bu­tions from the sup­port­ing cast of stu­dents whose names are so amus­ing­ly man­gled, it’s very, very fun­ny. “You done messed up, A‑A-Ron!”

Sub­sti­tute Teacher, Mr Gar­vey
Literature

Plato’s Allegory Of The Cave (c.375 BC)

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Any­one who has stud­ied phi­los­o­phy to any rea­son­able degree will be famil­iar with the “Father” of phi­los­o­phy, Pla­to (c.428–348 BC). Along with this teacher, Socrates, and his stu­dent, Aris­to­tle, Pla­to under­pins the canon of ancient Greek phi­los­o­phy and, descend­ing from that, the entire his­to­ry of West­ern and Mid­dle East­ern phi­los­o­phy to this day. Alfred North White­head summed up Plato’s endur­ing influ­ence by char­ac­ter­is­ing the whole of sub­se­quent phi­los­o­phy as “a series of foot­notes to Pla­to”.

Pla­to inno­vat­ed the so-called dialec­tic method of rea­son­ing by way of dia­logues between two or more char­ac­ters (one of them often being his old teacher Socrates him­self) in order to tease out the truth about some­thing. Plato’s Socrates turns many an inter­locu­tor on his head with his acute rea­son­ing, and he’s also a dab hand with alle­gories: his most famous being found in Plato’s Repub­lic and known as the Alle­go­ry of the Cave.

In this alle­go­ry Socrates describes a group of pris­on­ers who live their lives chained to the wall of a cave, and fac­ing a blank wall. The pris­on­ers see only shad­ows pro­ject­ed on the wall by objects pass­ing in front of a fire behind them. The shad­ows are the pris­on­ers’ real­i­ty, but are not accu­rate rep­re­sen­ta­tions of the real world; they are mere­ly frag­ments of real­i­ty. Socrates explains that a philoso­pher is one who seeks to under­stand and per­ceive the high­er lev­els of real­i­ty and is like the pris­on­er who is freed from the cave and who comes to under­stand that the shad­ows on the wall are not the direct source of the images seen.

There is a thread run­ning between this ancient alle­go­ry right up to mod­ern times as sci­ence grap­ples with the fun­da­men­tal make­up of real­i­ty and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of high­er dimen­sions but we needn’t tax our­selves with such deep mat­ters right now. Instead, enjoy this excel­lent clay ani­ma­tion short which sum­maris­es the alle­go­ry nice­ly and is the work of writer and direc­tor Michael Ram­say, clay­ma­tion artist John Grigs­by and voice actor Kristo­pher Hut­son.

Pla­to’s Cave
Art

Caspar David Friedrich’s Wanderer Above The Sea Of Fog (1818)

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Back in 2016 when I intro­duced this blog (here) and the sense of the “sub­lime” as some­thing of excel­lence “occa­sion­al­ly glimpsed” here­in, I men­tioned that the con­cept of the sub­lime was one with a long his­to­ry of being debat­ed by artists and writ­ers over the cen­turies. I can pad that idea out a bit now, since it has a direct con­nec­tion to the sub­ject of this week’s blog, and so for fun and edi­fi­ca­tion, here’s a lit­tle pot­ted his­to­ry or mini-essay on the con­cept of the sub­lime.

The first known study of the con­cept was the 1st cen­tu­ry AD trea­tise On The Sub­lime, ascribed to Long­i­nus and which talks about the use of great or lofty lan­guage, intend­ed to inspire awe or ven­er­a­tion, in the field of rhetoric. This trea­tise was redis­cov­ered in the 16th cen­tu­ry and trans­lat­ed into Eng­lish and French in the fol­low­ing decades, and it had a sig­nif­i­cant influ­ence on lit­er­ary crit­i­cism and the phi­los­o­phy of aes­thet­ics in the 17th and 18th cen­turies.

The con­cept was devel­oped in Britain in the ear­ly 18th cen­tu­ry and came to describe an aes­thet­ic qual­i­ty in nature dis­tinct from beau­ty, brought into promi­nence by the writ­ings of John Den­nis (1693), Joseph Addi­son (1705) and Antho­ny Ash­ley-Coop­er (1709). All three of these authors had under­tak­en a cross­ing of the Alps, as part of that famil­iar Enlight­en­ment pas­time the “Grand Tour”, and all three inde­pen­dent­ly expressed their con­trast­ing feel­ings of fear and plea­sure at the awe­some­ness of nature and derived, as Addi­son described it, “an agree­able kind of hor­ror”.

Edmund Burke more for­mal­ly devel­oped this con­cep­tion of sub­lim­i­ty in A Philo­soph­i­cal Enquiry into the Ori­gin of Our Ideas of the Sub­lime and Beau­ti­ful in 1756, and Ger­man philoso­phers Kant, Schopen­hauer, Hegel and Rudolf Otto each added their aca­d­e­m­ic heft to the sub­ject. Soon, the con­cept would be realised in the art move­ment known as Roman­ti­cism and we would see the por­tray­al of land­scape in an entire­ly new man­ner: not just a visu­al­i­sa­tion of the sim­ple enjoy­ment of a beau­ti­ful view, as in the clas­sic con­cep­tion, but rather an exam­i­na­tion of a reunion with the spir­i­tu­al self through the con­tem­pla­tion of nature and its majes­tic pow­er.

Ger­man artist Cas­par David Friedrich (1774–1840) was instru­men­tal in cre­at­ing this notion of a land­scape full of roman­tic feel­ing: die roman­tis­che Stim­mungs­land­schaft. Friedrich’s paint­ings com­mon­ly employed the Rück­en­fig­ur, a per­son seen from behind, con­tem­plat­ing the land­scape and invit­ing the view­er to sim­i­lar­ly place him­self in that medi­um and expe­ri­ence the sub­lime poten­tial of nature. The Friedrich paint­ing that is above all used to char­ac­terise this con­cept is his 1818 oil on can­vas, Wan­der­er above the Sea of Fog.

It depicts a man stand­ing upon a rocky precipice and gaz­ing out across a land­scape cov­ered in a thick sea of fog through which oth­er ridges, trees, and moun­tains pierce. It is con­sid­ered one of the mas­ter­pieces of the Roman­ti­cism move­ment and to suc­cess­ful­ly evoke the sub­lime or Addis­on’s “agree­able hor­ror”.

Cas­par David Friedrich, Wan­der­er above the Sea of Fog
Music

Richard Wagner’s Ride Of The Valkyries (1870)

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There’s noth­ing quite as Ger­man­ic as a Wag­n­er opera, and noth­ing quite as epic as his mag­num opus, Der Ring des Nibelun­gen (The Ring of the Nibelung). The full cycle of the four parts of The Ring lasts fif­teen hours and although prag­ma­tism these days gen­er­al­ly means that just one of the parts is per­formed, I do like the idea of watch­ing it in its entire­ty. A bit like read­ing Proust’s In Search Of Lost Time in its 1.2 mil­lion word entire­ty (see my blog on that here). Nei­ther chal­lenge have I yet under­tak­en, I should say, but back in 1876, it must have been some spec­ta­cle to have attend­ed the famous Bayreuth Fes­ti­val, when the full cycle was per­formed for the first time, over four days: Das Rhein­gold (The Rhine­gold), Die Walküre (The Valkyrie), Siegfried, and Göt­ter­däm­merung (Twi­light of the Gods)

The opera is loose­ly based on char­ac­ters from Ger­man­ic and Norse hero­ic leg­end and cen­tres around the epony­mous mag­ic ring that grants domin­ion over the world and how it is fought over by gen­er­a­tions of gods, heroes and myth­i­cal crea­tures, until the final cat­a­clysm at the end of the Göt­ter­däm­merung. The com­plex­i­ty of the epic tale is matched by the increas­ing com­plex­i­ty of the music as it pro­gress­es, and Wag­n­er wrote for such a gar­gan­tu­an orches­tra that a spe­cial pur­pose-built the­atre was built at Bayreuth.

The piece that we all know is the Ride of the Valkyries from Die Walküre, con­tain­ing that rous­ing leit­mo­tif as the Valkyrie sis­ters of Norse mythol­o­gy (“choosers of the slain”) trans­port the fall­en heroes to Val­hal­la. The music was used in Apoc­a­lypse Now (1979) where it was played on heli­copter-mount­ed loud­speak­ers dur­ing the Amer­i­can assault on Viet­cong-con­trolled vil­lages. And just recent­ly, in the excel­lent and grit­ti­ly hon­est TV doc­u­men­tary film, Our Falk­lands War: A Front­line Sto­ry, it was revealed that it was sim­i­lar­ly played loud­ly over the tan­noy as 2 Para were get­ting into the land­ing craft in prepa­ra­tion for their first assault on the Falk­land Islands.

Here’s a ver­sion from the BBC Proms, best enjoyed from a sofa rather than a land­ing craft.

Cesare Viazzi, Ride of the Valkyries (1906)

 

Art

Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel Ceiling (1512)

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Well, I sup­pose it had to hap­pen soon­er or lat­er, what with the Cre­ation of Adam being astride the top of these blogs week in, week out: it’s time to look at that apex preda­tor of the Renais­sance art world, and num­ber one cause of vis­i­tors’ neck strain, the Sis­tine Chapel. No vis­it to Rome is com­plete with­out it, and per­haps no blog on the sub­lime can afford to omit it.

First, a whis­tle-stop his­to­ry tour: Sis­tine Chapel 101, if you like. Meet Pope Six­tus IV, pope between 1471 and 1484:

Pope Six­tus IV

It was Six­tus (adjec­tive “Sis­tine” in case you need that mansplained) who com­mis­sioned the build­ing of the chapel, which was com­plet­ed in 1481 and has served ever since as the Pope’s offi­cial res­i­dence. Six­tus is also known for found­ing the Span­ish Inqui­si­tion, but that’s anoth­er sto­ry, let’s stick with the chapel. He arranged for a team of painters (not Michelan­ge­lo yet — he comes lat­er — but includ­ing two oth­er famous names, Bot­ti­cel­li and Ghirlan­diao) to cre­ate a series of fres­coes on the walls, depict­ing the lives of Moses and Jesus.

Fast for­ward to 1508 and Pope Julius II is in charge (Julius was a rel­a­tive of Six­tus: nepo­tism was anoth­er of Sixtus’s strong suits):

Pope Julius II

Julius com­mis­sioned Michelan­ge­lo to com­plete the dec­o­ra­tion of the chapel by paint­ing the ceil­ing, which he com­plet­ed four years lat­er in 1512. This was a project that changed the course of West­ern art and is right­ly regard­ed as one of the crown­ing artis­tic accom­plish­ments of human civil­i­sa­tion. Replete with bib­li­cal scenes,  sto­ries and char­ac­ters, the ceil­ing is a riotous col­lec­tion of limbs and draperies, at first glance, and indeed a pho­to of the ceil­ing does­n’t real­ly do it jus­tice — but giv­en time to appre­ci­ate (whilst not bump­ing into fel­low tourists), it is an artis­tic tour de force that war­rants its fame. Click on these images to expand; the first to spot the Cre­ation of Adam wins a prize…

Film, TV, and Theatre

Zack Snyder’s 300 (2006)

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Frank Miller is an Amer­i­can artist and writer of com­ic books and graph­ic nov­els such as The Dark Knight Returns, Sin City, and the inspi­ra­tion for today’s blog, 300. I have not pre­vi­ous­ly delved into the genre of the graph­ic nov­el, and actu­al­ly I’m not today either because it’s the 2006 film of the same name by Zack Sny­der, inspired by Miller’s sto­ry, that I am writ­ing about. Nev­er­the­less, the film is very much led by the graph­ic nov­el vibe and owes its styl­is­tic ren­der­ing to Miller’s work.

300 is a fic­tion­al retelling of the Bat­tle of Ther­mopy­lae in 480 BC between the invad­ing Per­sian army and the Spar­tans dur­ing the Per­sian Wars. Some years ago, my fam­i­ly and I went on a dri­ving hol­i­day to Greece and along the way vis­it­ed the sites of three ancient bat­tles: Marathon, Plataea, and the mel­liflu­ous­ly named Ther­mopy­lae, the “Hot Gates”. There’s a stat­ue of the Spar­tan king Leonidas there, his fame res­onat­ing down the ages a full two and a half thou­sand years lat­er (2502, at the time of writ­ing, to be pre­cise). The con­tem­po­ra­ne­ous his­to­ri­an Herodotus wrote about Ther­mopy­lae in his His­to­ries: how the Per­sian king Xerx­es I and his army were held at the nar­row pass at Ther­mopy­lae by a mas­sive­ly out­num­bered unit of 300 Spar­tan sol­diers. It’s history’s great­est last stand.

And boy, does the film take this idea and run with it! It is of course ide­alised out of any remote con­nec­tion to real­i­ty, but this is its whole point: it is graph­ic nov­el in motion and is made specif­i­cal­ly to be a feast for the eyes. It takes some­thing that is the most bru­tal, piti­less con­cep­tion imag­in­able – that of hand-to-hand, kill-or-be-killed com­bat with cold met­al – and turns it into a bal­let, a chore­og­ra­phy of bat­tle. Ger­ard But­ler plays Leonidas and brings rous­ing lead­er­ship to its apex: the way he moti­vates his fight­ers to bat­tle is up there with Brave­heart and Hen­ry V.

With a slight word of warn­ing for those for whom mass bat­tle is not their par­tic­u­lar cup of tea, do oth­er­wise watch this bat­tle scene. It encap­su­lates the val­our, the do-or-die spir­it, the out­right strength and dis­ci­pline and fight­ing capa­bil­i­ty of these trained Spar­tan sol­diers, and it does so, as I say, with a styl­is­ti­cal­ly chore­o­graphed beau­ty that is equal­ly won­der­ful and dis­turb­ing to behold. With the pro­vi­so that I would nev­er wish myself in the midst of this scene in a mil­lion years (the blood runs cold at the thought), by God it’s thrilling to watch!

300
Film, TV, and Theatre

Leonard Rossiter as Rigsby in Rising Damp (1975)

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We tend to think of sev­en­ties’ com­e­dy as hav­ing failed the test of time and some­thing per­haps best for­got­ten, due to our mod­ern-day sen­si­tiv­i­ties regard­ing out­dat­ed cul­tur­al norms such as those around gen­der roles and race rela­tions. Our minds con­jure up such stark exam­ples as Love Thy Neigh­bour and Mind Your Lan­guage, and cringe at their naivety, whilst the sight of white actors “black­ing up” in It Ain’t Half Hot Mum would cause notable dis­com­fort these days. But to dis­re­gard all sev­en­ties sit­coms on such a premise is to throw baby out with the bath­wa­ter, because in amongst the com­e­dy TV shows from that decade are some absolute gems, and the best of them in my view was Ris­ing Damp.

Ris­ing Damp was writ­ten by Eric Chap­pell on the back of his 1973 stage play The Banana Box and ran between 1974 and 1978, star­ring Leonard Rossiter, Frances de la Tour, Richard Beck­in­sale and Don War­ring­ton. Rossiter plays Rigs­by, the miser­ly land­lord of a run-down Vic­to­ri­an town­house who rents out his shab­by bed­sits to a vari­ety of ten­ants: Beck­in­sale plays Alan, a long-haired and good-natured med­ical stu­dent; Frances de la Tour plays Ruth (Miss Jones), the whim­si­cal spin­ster with whom Rigs­by is in love; and War­ring­ton plays the recent arrival Philip Smith, also a stu­dent and appar­ent­ly the son of an African chief. As a black man, Philip ini­tial­ly brings out the knee-jerk sus­pi­cions of Rigs­by; how­ev­er, the land­lord quick­ly accepts his new ten­ant and hence­forth regards him with a wary respect borne of Philip’s intel­li­gence and sophis­ti­cat­ed man­ners (some­thing not lost on Miss Jones either).

The char­ac­ters were ful­ly-formed from day one due to the fact that three of the prin­ci­pal actors had already honed their char­ac­ters in the stage play (only Beck­in­sale was new to the role). The dia­logue is bril­liant­ly con­ceived and deliv­ered by the actors with aplomb: their tim­ing is superb, and in Rigs­by, of course, we have one of the great­est com­e­dy char­ac­ters of all time. Watch him here as Alan and Philip tease him about women and the “eroge­nous zones”, that new­ly pop­u­larised term made pos­si­ble by the rise of the “per­mis­sive soci­ety”. Price­less.

Ris­ing Damp cast
Music

Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side Of The Moon (1973)

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Read­ers of my gen­er­a­tion may recog­nise the fol­low­ing com­mon social trope from teenage gath­er­ings and house par­ties. As music plays, ring-pulls are released from cans of lager, and friend­ly ban­ter fills the room, in a dim-lit cor­ner, a long-haired layabout is skin­ning up a joint on the near­est album cov­er, which always seems to be Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon. It per­haps wasn’t always The Dark Side of the Moon, but as a meme it fits pret­ty well into this snap­shot of the­mat­ic mem­o­ry. Mind you, in the era I was attend­ing teenage gath­er­ings, at the start of the eight­ies, the album was already get­ting quite old (it had been released in 1973) but it had turned into an endur­ing and per­pet­u­al­ly high-sell­ing album that every­one (the lads any­way) seemed to relate to.

It was the Floyd’s eighth stu­dio album, con­ceived and devel­oped over years as a con­cept album explor­ing var­ied themes such as con­flict, greed, time, death and men­tal ill­ness, and large­ly inspired by the band’s ardu­ous lifestyle and the grow­ing men­tal health prob­lems suf­fered by for­mer band mem­ber Syd Bar­rett (who left the group in 1968). Pri­mar­i­ly devel­oped dur­ing live per­for­mances, the band added new mate­r­i­al dur­ing two ses­sions in 1972 and 1973 at Abbey Road Stu­dios in Lon­don.

It’s high­ly exper­i­men­tal: the group incor­po­rat­ed mul­ti­track record­ing, tape loops, ana­logue syn­the­sis­ers, and snip­pets from inter­views with the band’s road crew and var­i­ous philo­soph­i­cal quo­ta­tions. The engi­neer was Alan Par­sons, and he was respon­si­ble for much of the son­ic feel to the album (not least by recruit­ing the singer Clare Tor­ry, who appears on The Great Gig in the Sky). It works extra­or­di­nar­i­ly well, as a whole as much as its indi­vid­ual parts. This actu­al­ly takes me back to anoth­er teenage meme, that of bod­ies lying around a dark­ened room, in a pleas­ant fug, and lis­ten­ing to the album in its entire­ty.

Here’s the intro to the album put effec­tive­ly to video by a fan (cred­it: Marc-André Ranger)…enjoy! Now, where are those Rizlas?

Pink Floyd
The icon­ic album cov­er, by Storm Thorg­er­son
Film, TV, and Theatre

Robert Donat in Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939)

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Some months ago here at OGOTS Tow­ers, in a piece on Walt Whitman’s O Cap­tain! My Cap­tain (see here), we looked at that won­der­ful role por­trayed by Robin Williams in Dead Poets Soci­ety: the uber-inspi­ra­tional teacher, John Keat­ing. Well, this week we’re look­ing at anoth­er stal­wart of the fic­tion­al school­room, one Charles Edward Chip­ping AKA “Mr Chips”.

Good­bye, Mr. Chips is a 1939 roman­tic dra­ma based on the 1934 novel­la of the same name by James Hilton. The film is about Mr Chip­ping (Robert Donat), a much-loved elder­ly school teacher at Brook­field pub­lic school, who looks back at his career and per­son­al life over the decades. We learn about his rise through the teach­ing ranks, his friend­ship with Ger­man teacher Max Stae­fel (Paul Hein­reid) and his trag­i­cal­ly short mar­riage to Kathy (Greer Gar­son), who dies in child­birth along with their baby. From there­on in, Chips’ life is devot­ed exclu­sive­ly to the school and he devel­ops a rap­port with gen­er­a­tions of pupils, even­tu­al­ly teach­ing the sons and grand­sons of many of his ear­li­er pupils.

Although he osten­si­bly retires in 1914, Chips is soon enjoined to return as inter­im head­mas­ter due to the short­age of teach­ers because of the Great War. Dur­ing a bomb­ing attack by a Ger­man Zep­pelin, Chips insists that the boys keep on trans­lat­ing their Latin, and to the great amuse­ment of his pupils, choos­es the sto­ry of Julius Cae­sar’s bat­tles against the Ger­man­ic tribes. Now there’s stiff upper lip!

As the war drags on though, every Sun­day in chapel Chips reads aloud into the school’s Roll of Hon­our the names of the many for­mer boys and teach­ers who have died in the war. It’s a poignant scene (that you can see below). Upon dis­cov­er­ing that Max Stae­fel has died fight­ing on the Ger­man side, he reads out his name, too. “Fun­ny read­ing his name out with the oth­ers, after all, he was an ene­my”, says one school­boy to anoth­er after­wards. “One of Chips’ ideas I sup­pose” his mate says, “he’s got lots of fun­ny ideas like that”.

Chips retires per­ma­nent­ly in 1918, but con­tin­ues liv­ing near­by. He is on his deathbed in 1933 when he over­hears his col­leagues talk­ing about him. He responds, “I thought I heard you say it was a pity – a pity I nev­er had any chil­dren. But you’re wrong. I have! Thou­sands of them, thou­sands of them.. and all.. boys”.

Robert Donat as Mr Chips

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