Review

Culture

Education

7 September 2023

6 min read

Back to school on the big screen

It’s back to school for many. Yaroslav Walker picks his favourite films capturing the friendship, the drama, and the expectation of school life and beyond.

Yaroslav Walker

Yaroslav is Vicar of Christ Church, Hampstead.

School students walk across a playground confidently talking and laughing with us

The History Boys.

BBC Films.

The summer is coming to an end, the last BBQ embers are sputtering to sleep, the weather…appears not to have been told, at least in London! Sweltering! Most importantly of all, our children are back to school, nursery or college. In light of this momentous time of year here are my top five back to school film choices, one each for the last five decades, and some honourable mentions.

1970s - American Grafitti

A teenage couple dressed in 1950s clothes sit on a kerb in deep conversation.

Charles Martin Smith and Candy Clark in American Graffiti

American Graffiti isn’t just a lovely piece of nostalgia now, it was back then. A misty-eyed look back at 60s Americana, this film is packed with slicked-back hair, classic cars, diners with roller-skating waitresses, and the complexities of teenage romance. Four friends meet on the last day of summer to experience the joys of a California evening one last time before two of them jet off to college ‘back East’. Curt is unsure about his future and is even considering staying in his hometown. Steve is hubristically thrilled about the prospect of fleeing his humdrum life and even shedding his loving girlfriend for new conquests. Terry is insecure and simply desperate to prove he is as good as everyone else, and Milner is the older friend who never left town and is a local-legend drag-racer. Over the course of a long night they go their separate ways, have adventures, and finally find some closure to their ongoing anxieties: one finds new confidence, another begins to take risks, another learns to be happy with his lot, and Milner wins a drag race…oh, an learns the genuine happiness that can be found in adult responsibility. It's too long, but it is a lovely atmosphere to meander about in, and is edited superbly so it never really drags. With superb performances and a soundtrack bursting with 50s and 60s hits, this is well worth a watch.

1980s - The Breakfast Club

Five glum students perch on stools in school room.

Molly Ringwald, Emilio Estevez, Judd Nelson, Ally Sheedy, and Anthony Michael Hall in The Breakfast Club.

Well what else could it have been!? In many ways the film set the classic pattern of US High School living (which did and sometimes still does inform UK attitudes) and the High School movie. John Hughes didn’t invent these archetypes and wasn’t the first to put them on celluloid, but he was the master of crystallising them. The Breakfast Club presents an all-day detention that just so happens to have a representative from every social caste of the High School system: Andrew the jock (Emelio Esteves), Brian the nerd (Anthony Michael Hall), Allison the weirdo (Ally Sheedy), Claire the popular girl (Molly Ringwald), and Bender the burnout (Judd Nelson). These five kids have nothing in common but their dislike of the domineering Vice-Principal (Paul Gleason was born for this role!)…OR DO THEY!? Whereas American Graffiti explored the process of maturing into adulthood and the taking charge of one’s sense of self (with a background hum of Vietnam paranoia and the end of golden Americana days), The Breakfast Club is much more forthright in demonstrating just how difficult being a teenager is. These kids don’t need help ‘growing up’, if anything they need to be allowed to be kids. Over the course of the day their defences break down and they learn that each of them has expectations and pressures that seem overwhelming, and grown to have genuine respect and compassion for each other. A script that is sometimes on-the-nose and prone to soliloquy is saved by the sheer bravura of the performances. A go to comfort film, that will always be iconic. Any film which ends with Simple Minds is a 5 star affair for me.

1990s - The Faculty

Two students walk down a school corridor, one looking away.

Elijah Wood and Jordana Brewster in The Faculty.

We move to slightly scarier fare with the 90s. The Faculty asks the question you were all asking…what if Invasion of the Bodysnatchers took place in an American high school? The answer is subtext; a lot of subtext and allegory. You know, when you’re a teenager, everything can seem quite tough. The world can seem like it's against you. It can seem like everyone you know has changed overnight and you’re lost in a sea of hostile faces. It can seem like a parasitic alien is using your school as a beachhead for a planetary takeover. The Faculty is cinematic junk-food and unapologetically so. It is camp and silly and fun. It takes those Hughesian archetypes, puts them on steroids, and then throws them into a plot joyfully riffing on the most classic sci-fi and horror tropes - all held nicely together with a quip-filled Kevin Williamson screenplay. An underrated Robert Rodriguez directorial effort which shows that he can work well across genres, and an excellent opportunity to see early performances from Josh Hartnett, Elijah Wood, Jon Stewart, and…wait…is that Usher in that film!?

2000s - The History Boys

Yes, we move to British shores at last. Alan Bennett’s stage-play is brought to beautiful cinematic life by original director Nicholas Hytner, who has an excellent track record of translating Bennett’s work from stage to screen. It’s another flash of nostalgia (which all such films are, as adult writers and directors look back to their own school days and teenage angst and adventure) which transports the viewer to 1980s Sheffield. A group of friends at the local Grammar School have all done very well in their A Levels and are now put to the task of preparing for the Oxford entrance exams. All are lovers of History (well, maybe not Rudge) and have received an enviously eclectic education in the full gamut of culture from the eccentric and long-suffering Hector. Like all the films above, The History Boys explores the challenges of adolescence, but with a specific focus on ‘doing well’ in a particularly British way. Sporting excellence or popularity aren’t the measure of student success - Oxbridge is. The teachers don’t push the young men nearly as much as they do themselves, seeing a place at Oxford as the best form of advancement. The witty and moving script also touches on the issue of infatuation, attraction, sexual fluidity, and chaste reciprocity: Posner’s love for Dakin being encouraged only so far in some sort of mutually agreed stand-off, Dakin’s willingness to sleep with the substitute teacher Irwin, and (of course) Hector’s tradition of giving the boys a ride home on his motorcycle and…appreciating them aesthetically. Not easy subject matter, but written and directed and shot and performed with such sensitivity that you can’t help but fall in love with every character.

2010s - The Inbetweeners Movie

Two students look at each in in incomprehension.

Blake Harrison and Simon Bird in The Inbetweeners.

We end with crudity. Crudity and friendship and a booze-filled week in Crete. Lovers of the TV show (I was one) - which explored the trials and tribulations of four unpopular, unremarkable, and unfortunate teens at a British comprehensive school- were well served by this upgrade. TV comedies, like plays, rarely translate well; The Inbetweeners Movie is an honourable exception. Will, Simon, Jay, and Neil have come to the end of their school days and decide that they need one final hurrah before they go their separate ways. The proceeding 90 minutes is a torrent of drunken antics, foul-mouthed discourse, and crass toilet humour, all threaded together by hapless and fruitless sexual intrigue. 90 mins of that might seem like it would wear thin, but The Inbetweeners Movie is too kind-hearted to go stale (unlike its successor which was a genuinely squalid and unpleasant affair which had me questioning humanity). The four young men are so pathetic in the true sense of the word, that you can’t help but cheer for them. The overall message of friendship as a virtue that transcends the ups-and-downs of life give the salty humour a sweet edge. For a certain generation - mine - this might be the definitive British school movie.

Honourable Mentions

Grease

Sort of like American Graffiti…but better. I’m talking Travolta, I’m talking Newton-John, I’m talking songs that are bullet-proof! Graffiti is on the official list because it speaks to the many cultural and political undercurrents of the time…but Grease is so much more fun. If you can only see one of the two, see Grease!

Gregory’s Girl

Pipped by Breakfast because of the archetypes and Simple Minds, but probably one of the finest British rom-coms ever!

Mean Girls

Obviously. It's so fetch!

Article

Books

Culture

Original sin

Trust

22 July 2025

6 min read

When the penny drops, on the Salt Path or a London street

Being taken in unleashes dark, unpalatable emotions

Susan Gray

Susan is a writer specialising in visual arts and contributes to Art Quarterly, The Tablet, Church Times and Discover Britain.

A painting show Adam and Eve wide-eyed after the fall.

Paradise Lost, Emil Nolde, 1921.

Nolde Foundation Seebüll.

Doubts about the honesty of The Salt Path, Raynor Winn’s memoir of walking the Southwest coastal path with her ill husband Moth, have raged in the past weeks. Investigations revealing the duo’s real names, financial history and the medical unlikelihood of the reversals in Moth’s degenerative condition, as presented in the book, provoked thousands of readers to express anger and disappointment at being duped. But being taken in and learning from it is part of being human: a lesson in how to trust more wisely, rather than not trusting at all

Last summer I was scam mugged on my local high street. Passing a frail pensioner pulling loose notes from his pocket, I picked up his fallen tenners and returned them. Six steps later, a woman shrieking I’d thieved her “granddad’s” money grabbed my arm. Cue a few minutes of struggling and shouting, before I got away, bruised and humiliated, but still gripping my bag. Vowed afterwards to always walk on by if I saw someone needing help on London’s streets, as it could be a set up.
But this detachment didn’t last. Being a goodish Samaritan is hardwired, even on the capital’s occasionally mean streets. We want to support and connect with our brothers and sisters. Withdrawal from our fellow citizens makes us more unsafe, not less. As Kaya Comer-Schwartz, London’s Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime, said: “The safety of our town centres is more than just policing – it's about building stronger, more connected communities where everyone feels secure.”

Certainly, a police officer would have been a welcome sight while tussling with my would-be conwoman. But I was grateful to the handful of people who stopped, as they would be my witnesses if the assailant went full mugger, in frustration that the ploy for me to open my bag had gone awry.

Memoirs also entreat us to bear witness, explaining the betrayal felt by some of the Salt Path’s two million readers who invested emotion and empathy in its uplifting tale of a hard -done -by couple finding solace in nature. Identifying with the memoir’s midlife, everyman duo and believing a long trek through the Southwest is a silver bullet for homelessness, financial woes and degenerative medical conditions, does not make the Salt Path’s former fans saps, it makes them beautifully human.

Raynor and Moth’s unmasking as Sally and, still remarkably healthy, Tim Walker, who lost their Welsh farmhouse following accusations of embezzlement against Sally and owned a property in France when claiming to be homeless, has lifted the lid on the publishing industry’s hunger for real life stories, with morally simple, feelgood narrative arcs. Bonus points if the tale includes a “nature cure”, where nature is not just a balm for grief and pain, but somehow vanquishes it altogether. Fact checking takes a lower priority than shaping a story into a series of emotional hot button scenes, with a neat, satisfying ending. And publishers may be guilty of their own sleight-of-hand by incentivising booksellers to personally recommend to customers a list of predetermined titles, creating the aura of ‘word of mouth’ hits.

Mean Girls’ great line “Jealous much?” captures journalists’ enthusiasm, mine included, for the Salt Path scandal. How can bestseller success pass over writers with have spent decades crafting phrases like popular orange vegetable to avoid writing carrot twice, yet shine on Raynor/ Sally’s repetitive, clunky prose? ”We lost. Lost the case. Lost the house.” Her dizzying ascent from unknown debut non-fiction author, with only a piece in the Big Issue to her name, to a book deal with Penguin, seems to other writers a mystery as great as anything in her trekking tale.

Feeling deceived unleashes these dark, unpalatable emotions such as envy and desire for revenge. I long nourished fantasies of catching the scammers in action and deflecting their next victim by shouting “Look! Granddad’s dropping his money again,” before handily nearby forces of law and order brought them to book. Even if you lose little materially from a con, the loss of dignity and sense of agency from becoming a mark, a manipulated, dehumanised bit player in another’s exploitive narrative, takes time to get over.

Popular accounts of online romance fraud feel designed to give audiences a sense of superiority, ‘I’d see that coming a mile off’, over the victims, reinforcing their sense of shame. Yet evidently with many thousands being lured by romance fraud, the perpetrators use effective psychological coercion techniques. Omniscient superiority needs to be replaced with empathy and support for fleeced, broken-hearted victims.

Grifters are part of life, but their reductive, empathy-free, world view does not have to be. As singer Nick Cave’s counsels, cynicism is not the answer: "Cynicism is not a neutral position — and although it asks almost nothing of us, it is highly infectious and unbelievably destructive. In my view, it is the most common and easy of evils.”

Religious origin stories, including the Garden of Eden, contain an element of falling for a trick. Eve does the serpent’s bidding, and she and Adam are banished from paradise. “So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.” Emil Nolde’s painting Paradise Lost, 1921, catches perfectly the moment the penny drops with Adam and Eve on the consequences of falling for the serpent. Yet by the following chapter of Genesis they start a family, moving on with life with new insight.

To never confront disappointment would be to remain as an infant, without the opportunities to grow and develop as adults.

In the Good Samaritan, one of the best-known parables, Jesus transforms the categorising question ‘who is my neighbour?’ into the universal quest of ‘how can I be a better neighbour’? Our bonds with our communities, a sense of shared humanity are the best, possibly the only defence, against those who would mislead us or do us harm.

Celebrated American journalist Ira Glass said: “Great stories happen to those who can tell them.” Published in 2018, The Salt Path’s direct, film-like scenes of survival against the odds and against the elements, would have resonated with all the people who saw their security and lifestyle nosedive after the 2008 financial crash, never to recover. Suspending disbelief, Raynor and Moth’s 620-mile wild camping trek, represented a symbolic railing against a heartless economic system.

My experience of the penny dropping a fraction too late to escape the scammers, has made me revise my self image as a streetwise Londoner. On my way to pick up holiday money that afternoon, my head was full of travel plans rather than focused on the here and now, a tendency I must curb.

If my assailant was writing her memoir I like to think our scrap would be the opening chapter, where she is at a crossroads of having to mug somebody in broad daylight, with a small, attentive audience, or rethink her street hustling career. Dressed in a fake leather biker jacket on a hot summer day - the smell lingers in my olfactory memory - her outfit was possibly an homage to Catherine Zeta Jones’ catsuit in Entrapment. As we know from all the TV series on con artists, looking the part is key.

Finding out the reality of her life since I broke free of her grip 11 months ago would not be hard, as she is now stationed outside Premier Foods by the tube station, in much scruffier clothes, asking for a pound for water. This sideways, or probably downwards move, in the street economy appears to be working out for her, and the peace of the neighbourhood.

Despite having lived in small rural communities for decades, throughout all The Salt Path controversy, nobody has come forward to say the Winns / Walkers were good neighbours. Setting this right could be their next adventure and next bestseller.

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