Our Friday night film of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie will be screened in partnership with this year’s Pentlands Book Festival . 

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie was released in 1969, starring Maggie Smith and Gordon Jackson, and based on Muriel Spark’s book of the same name, set in 1930s Edinburgh.  Four (in the book, six) ten-year-old girls are assigned Miss Brodie, who describes herself as being “in my prime,” as their teacher. She, determined that they shall receive an education in the original sense of the Latin educere, “to lead out,” gives her students lessons from her personal experiences, promoting art history, classical studies, and fascism. The “Brodie set” goes to art museums, theatre, concerts, and has picnics on the school lawn, which upsets the school’s austere headmistress, who dislikes the fact that the girls are cultured to the exclusion of hard knowledge.  However, in a flash-forward we learn that one of her set will later betray Brodie, ruining her career, but she will never learn which one.

In this centenary year of Muriel Spark’s birth it is still relevant to watch a film that won Maggie Smith an Academy Award and was ranked in 2015 in The Guardian as number 79 of the 100 best novels written in English.

Friday 2nd November