Product Description

When a woman refuses to sit next to him on the bus, Rick Braithewaite is saddened and angered by her prejudice. In post-war cosmopolitan London he had hoped for a more enlightened attitude. When he begins his first teaching job in a tough East End school the reactions are the same. Slowley and painfully some of the barriers are broken down. He shames his pupils, wrestles with them, enlightens them and eventually comes to love them. To Sir With Love is the story of a dedicated teacher who turns hate into love, teenage rebelliousness into self-respect, contempt into consideration for others - the story of a man's own integrity winning through against all the odds.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #183409 in Books
• Published on: 2005-08-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

From the Publisher
The inspirational story of one man overcoming prejudice in a tough East End school.

About the Author
E. R. Braithwaite was born 1920 in British Guiana and educated in British Guiana and the United States. He served in the R. A. F. His publications include To Sir with Love: Experiences While Teaching in a London School (1959); Paid Servant: A Report about Welfare Work in London (1962); A Kind of Home-Coming: A Visit to Africa (1963); A Choice of Straws (1965).

Customer Reviews

To Sir, With Love - An Inspiring And Heartwarming Novel.
To Sir, With Love by E.R. Braithwaite is a truly heartfelt and inspiring novel about a teacher's trials and tribulations in an East London high school. Braithwaite writes about his own experiences with a senior class and the prejudice that comes with his job. This is an incredible read. Through the perfect balance of description and dialogue, the author really makes you live what he went through as a teacher in that situation. The use of imagery, or word painting, allows you to visualise all of the various settings. What makes this book so spectacular is that we can all relate to this story to some degree, because many of us have been in a terrible situation, which we have overcome and that is exactly what E.R. Braithwaite did; he overcame the prejudice that faced him at every turn.

An impressive achievement
I picked this up second-hand after hearing something on the radio about the author (I now realise this book and the sequel were serialised on Radio 4 a few years ago). I saw the film starring Sidney Poitier many years ago so knew what it was about. In the book, as always, you get more: his background as a pilot in the RAF, and the discrimination he faced after demob which was overt and appalling.

The real story remains, however, his struggle to engage his final-year students at an East End secondary school and to try to influence their way of thinking and their behaviour. Written in a somewhat formal and dated style, it nevertheless makes a real impression and literally gets you under the skin of what it was like to be a well-educated black person in Britain in the 50s. One of the most memorable scenes in the book (which I can't remember being in the film) was a chance encounter with an elderly and wise man on a park bench who literally changed his life by showing understanding and pointing to a future career. On such unpredictable events our lives can turn!

After I had finished the book I was intrigued to know more about this writer and there is quite an extensive and informative Wikipedia entry on him. Among other facts are that both his parents went to Oxford University, he got a degree and a doctorate at Cambridge, and later went on to become Amabassador for Guyana in Venezuela. He has written several other books, and I would certainly be happy to read more by this author.

Read the book - see the film - read the book
The film is ever-popular, if somewhat sentimental. However, the book is dry and staid. But being a little autistic about these things, I had to find out the truth; I love the film, and the theme tune does it justice. I HAD to read the book.
The book is a little less holds-barred; glossed over scenes in the film, such as the sanitary towel incident, are fleshed out a little bit more, but Braithwaithe writes in a very matter-of-fact tone, almost as if the story is an academic work, or a case study. You get a measure of the man, but he holds himself back, almost as if he is viewing his own story fron afar.
The very real discrimination he experienced is not so much covered over, as dismissed as almost one-of-those-things, which is a little disconcerting; didn't he want to stamp and rage?
This is a book for completists, those who are compelled to look beyond the surface.
I'm glad I read this. But it didn't add a great deal more to what I learnt from the film.