Miss Jean Brodie is a teacher at a Scottish Girl’s School in the 1930’s. She selects a small group of girls from her junior class to become her ‘creme de la creme’ of girls, who will be under her guidance.

This guidance is thrilling to the six young students as Miss Brodie teaches them about Art and Romance and Love, instead of History, Mathemetics etc, as she is hired to do. The head mistress of the school is dubious of Miss Brodie, and for some time has tried to push her out of her teaching position, but never has the ammunition or proof of any wrong doings to be able to achieve her goal.

Miss Brodie’s teachings also involve individualism, team spirit being inadvisable; free thinking and also ways to avoid being caught learning things they shouldn’t be.

As the girls get older they realise that Miss Brodie likes not only the Art teacher, but also the singing teacher. Both men return her interest to the student’s excitement, providing eternal gossip and discussion among them.

One of the men is married with children, which poses problems for Miss Brodie who then deals with it her own manipulative fashion. The girls themselves spend more time with this man as he paints their portraits, over and over. Is it just a trick of the light, or do all the portraits resemble Miss Brodie? After many years of loyalty one of her ‘creme de la creme’ becomes Miss Brodie’s final downfall.

This classic (1961) has been re-released as an Unabridged Super-Readable book for Dyslexic Readers.

Voted by The Guardian as 1 of their top 100 books ever, this story haphazardly flicks back and forward in time between the characters to tell the story of this enigmatic but manipulative teacher who aims to mould her chosen student’s lives and opinions into adulthood. But does she succeed?

Made into several tv series over the years, Miss Jean Brodie has caused quite a stir.

Author – Muriel Spark

Age – 16+

Read the first Chapter here

(School, Manipulation, Sex education, Boarding School, Teacher, Classic, Religion, Politics, Left-Field)