Conflicting conservative and radical impulses in English society after WWII were played out in microcosm in education. They particularly shaped English teaching, examined in three post-war London schools in a detailed study that uses oral history-interviews with former teachers and students-and documents including mark books and students' work.

Using a wide range of student testimony and oral history, Georgina Brewis sets in international, comparative context a one-hundred year history of student voluntarism and social action at UK colleges and universities, including such causes as relief for victims of fascism in the 1930s and international development in the 1960s.