"This novel summarises the whole career of retired schoolmaster Mr Chipping - known, of course, to his pupils as "Chips" - dwelling on the highlights, which in some cases relate to events in late nineteenth and early twentieth century history that we still remember, not least the First World War.

"It takes the form of a gentle reminiscence, or appreciation, and includes generous examples of the sort of things for which former schoolboys (sorry, the fictional Fenland school Brooklands was a boys' school) remember their more interesting and influential teachers, and the things that teachers remember of their pupils. Chips was pleased to have taught representatives of as many as three generations of some families, and was not averse to recounting the sins of the father, or even the grandfather, to a class including the latest inheritor of the family failure to rapidly assimilate the finer points of Latin grammar.

"The book could be seen as sentimental, and that may account for much of its huge popularity on first publication (1934), but there will be few readers now with an experience of school at all close to that recounted. That helps bring to the fore some of the book's other qualities; among them its picture of life at a minor public school of its time, and the appreciation of the important relationship established between teachers and their pupils. Although much has changed, that relationship remains just as important as in the time of Mr Chips. Because all pupils and many staff so soon move on, schools as institutions have short memories. By contrast, the individual pupils and staff making up those institutions almost invariably remember for the rest of their lives the ethos and atmosphere of the school, and many individual occasions and incidents. It is good to be reminded of that."

Good condition.