Adapted beautifully by Alan Bennett from his awardwinning stage play, The History Boys is a deeply moving lesson in schooldays nostalgia, presiding over a tug of war between teachers and students at a grammar school in the north of England in the mid-Eighties.

For the boys, the pursuit of academic excellence is frequently disturbed by adolescent yearnings and gnarly questions of religion, class and sexuality.

For the masters, the years of staffroom rivalry and bureaucratic meddling have chipped away at their youthful idealism, rendering them sardonic and wistful in their fusty old age.

Bennett's screenplay retains most of the dazzling vignettes of the stage play including the recreations of classic movie scenes (a game played by one teacher and the students) and a hysterical French lesson.

The film version adds new teaching staff, like pious PE master Wilkes (Scarborough) and flighty art mistress Mrs Bibby (Wilton), and also ventures, on occasion, outside of the classroom, to Oxford for the boys' interviews and around the nearby winding streets.

As summer beckons for the pupils of Cutler's Grammar School, the Headmaster (Merrison) focuses his attention on ushering his brightest boys into the esteemed halls of Oxford and Cambridge. He enlists the services of eccentric English teacher Hector (Griffiths) and old-fashioned history teacher Mrs Lintott (de la Tour) to energise the students as they run the gauntlet of the admissions process.

"This is the biggest hurdle of their lives and I want them galvanised,"

commands the Head. "Think charm, think polish, think Renaissance Man."

To that end, he drafts in impassioned 20-something supply teacher Irwin (Campbell Moore), a graduate of Oxford, to forearm the boys with all of tricks necessary to sail through the oral and written exams.

The boys - Akthar (Dhawan), Crowther (Anderson), Dakin (Cooper), Lockwood (Knott), Posner (Barnett), Rudge (Tovey), Scripps (Parker) and Timms (Corden) - find their allegiances torn between inspirational and unconventional Hector, who is notorious for groping any lad willing to ride pillion on his motorcycle, and newcomer Irwin, who favours flashy presentation over rigorous scholarship.

Casualties of this hard-fought battle for young hearts and minds are considerable.

The History Boys comes top of class for direction, writing and performances.

The cast of The National Theatre stage production reprise the roles they originated under Nicholas Hytner's sensitive direction.

Griffiths is spellbinding as the charismatic yet fatally flawed mentor who proposes his groping could be considered a Benedictine laying-on of hands: "Hector darling, love you as I do, that is the most colossal balls," ripostes Mrs Lintott saltily.

De la Tour is formidable as a spinster trapped in a patriarchal microcosm and Moore conveys the naive optimism of a young man too afraid to take risks.

Cooper and Barnett are the linchpins of the student body, the latter fantastic in a pivotal scene with Hector, obliquely revealing their wounded hearts during a seminar on a Thomas Hardy poem.

(15, 109mins) Richard Griffiths, Frances de la Tour, Stephen Campbell Moore, Samuel Barnett, Dominic Cooper, Jamie Parker, Sacha Dhawan, Samuel Anderson, Andrew Knott, Russell Tovey, James Corden, Clive Merrison, Adrian Scarborough, Penelope Wilton. Directed by Nicholas Hytner.