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The History Teacher

40 0
23.08.2026

When people ask Matt what he does for a living, he sometimes replies that he’s a historian. Oh, they say, feigning mild interest, might I have read anything that you’ve written. At which point he has to admit it’s unlikely, unless they have a particular interest in Year 9 reports.  To be frank, Matt fell into being a history teacher. In three years at Durham, he became a master at speed-reading the introductions to books and writing semi-plagiarised essays while still mildly drunk at 4am. Despite his father’s hopes that he might cash in his unexpected First, a punishing summer internship at an American bank persuaded Matt to stay in academia a little longer. There followed a Masters, at Cambridge, which put him off academia for life, and three weeks of a law conversion course at BPP, which put him off law for life. Running out of options, he discovered from a friend that a minor private school was desperate to replace a teacher who had left over the October half-term under unfortunate circumstances. Matt, they promised, could learn – and train – on the job.  

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