One plus Five plus Fate

It is a recipe for frustration. Frozen in time by wartime restrictions, young men in post-war Britain have much the same 1930s attitudes to life as their fathers. On the other hand, the young women are looking to advance on the wartime job freedoms their mothers experienced. The Lord Chancellor still wields his blue pencil but, as always, sex is on the mind of every young person. In the autumn of 1954 five clever and self-confident lads in the sixth form of a boys grammar school are very aware that academic success will give them much better lives than their parents. They form an after school philosophical society but their pretentious deliberations are interrupted by a young cleaning lady needing to ‘do’ the classroom.