Unfairly sent down from Oxford for indecent exposure after the loutish Bollinger club have stripped him bare serious theology student Paul Pennyfeather ends up as a junior teacher at Dr Fagan's grim school in Wales. Nervous and under-qualified he finds allies in his colleagues, drunken ex-army Grimes, betrothed to Fagan's daughter Flossie, and wig-wearing Prendergast, along with school factotum Philbrook, a convicted criminal who has his own agenda. On the school's sports day Paul allows his only friend in the mischievous fifth form Peter Beste-Chetwynde to win, earning the respect of Peter's glamorous mother Margot, who arrives with her black musician consort Chokey and offers Paul a job with her.
—don @ minifie-1