Two public school teachers clash over teaching methods and the love of a good woman in this absorbing Hugh Walpole adaptation.

A beautifully observed and absorbing adaptation of the popular Hugh Walpole novel about two public school teachers who clash over their differing teaching methods and the love of a good woman. David Farrar and Marius Goring get top marks as the teachers butting heads over the sultry charms of the school nurse - and when it's Greta Gynt, who can blame them? But it's Raymond Huntley who arguably goes to the top of the class as the odious headmaster.

A new schoolmaster, David Traill, arrives at Banfield public school to commence the new term to find it under the tyrannical rule of headmaster Moy-Thompson. He immediately comes into conflict with another older teacher, Vincent Perrin, who has been at the school for twenty-one years and is set in his ways. The conflict arises over their differing methods, but, above all, over the affections for the school nurse, Isabel Lester, who Perrin has dreams of marrying believing, as he does, that she is interested in him. Perrin's treatment from Moy-Thompson, and the news that Traill and Lester are to marry, gradually drives him to desperation, and he attacks Traill while walking along the local cliffs. Traill accidentally falls over the cliff, and with the tide coming in, Perrin climbs down to effect a rescue, but is drowned while managing to save Traill. The latter informs Moy-Thompson of Perrin's death, telling him how the years of being brow-beaten are to blame for his mental state, and that his years of tyranny are over.