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The Harpole Report

Carr's third novel is based on his experiences as a school teacher in South Milford, Southampton and Birmingham, and then as Headmaster of a Primary School in Kettering. Carr described it as an evangelical tract that got away(see inscriptions, below))and said that it was written on the back of envelopes in trains and B&B bedrooms while travelling the country selling his maps and small books (Carr, 1983).

The novel was read on BBC Radio 4 in 1981 by Martin Jarvis; it was abridged by Neville Teller to be read by Alistair McGowan on BBC Radio 4's Book at Bedtime in January 1996; and it was serialised in Radio 4's 15 Minute Drama in 2012 in five episodes with Shaun Dingwall as George Harpole and Hattie Morahan as Emma Foxberrow, directed by Bruce Young.

On a price list that Carr sent to a friend in about 1987 Carr noted that the book had been 'bought for a film by BBC TV'. No film of the book was ever produced.

The novel was not reissued by the Quince Tree Press in Carr's life time, so that edition is not included here. It can now be bought from The Quince Tree Press.

(Last updated 28/2022)

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Front panel and spine of dust jacket

letters to the newspaper, local councillor, union officials, medical officers of health and members of parliament, letters to and from the local education authority. And from these rise into the light an assortment of memorable characters lurking in the English educational undergrowth. It is a comedy but there is a darker overtone of truth in it that should make everyone involved in education sit up and take uneasy notice.

Rear fold-in: J.L. Carr was educated at village schools in the North and West Ridings of Yorkshire, Castleford Secondary School and Dudley Training College for Teachers. At present he is the publisher of a series of historical-architectural maps of the English counties. His two previous novels were A Day in Summer and A Season in Sinji described by the Spectator reviewer as the best cricket story he had ever read.

Notes: Carr offered the novel to Alan Ross, the publisher of A Season in Sinji, who turned it down. It was accepted by Secker & Warburg, who paid Carr £367, according to an article in the Sunday Telegraph magazine in November 1980. Of the 3,000 copies printed, 940 remained unsold, which Carr bought for 12p a copy, or 8p, depending on which source you take. The title was then chosen in October 1976 by Frank Muir on the radio programme, Desert Island Discs as the book that he would take to his desert island, so Carr was able to sell the remainders at their full cover price. This may also explain why signed copies are relatively common. Carr also inscribed copies given to his friends.

A proof copy in orange wrappers offered by a book dealer has the following text on the cover:

The Harpole Report, J L Carr, The Hilarious Adventures of A Primary School Headmaster, Publication Date, May 1972, Provisional Price; £1-90, Secker & Warburg Uncorrected Advance Proof.

Inscriptions by Carr seen in copies of his book:

I began teaching when I was 18 as a ‘supernumeray’ (sic). (There were then supernumaries, supplementaries, uncertificateds, pupil-teachers and certificateds and graduates). Then I had a two year course at Dudley where none of our tutors had taught in the sort of schools they were training us for. For two years I taught history and was a games master in a Hampshire secondary school, then joined the B’ham supply staff until an appointment in a school for what were brutally called sub-normal children. In 1938 I went to S. Dakota on a years’ exchange and taught 8th and 9th grades in a prairie high school. The war began when I reached Baghdad on my way home westwards and, after six years as a tradesman photographer and a squadron intelligence officer, I began again in B’ham. Then, after I had taught in twenty-four schools, I settled in as head of a new, splendidly built and situated infant & junior school on the edge of Kettering and stayed there fifteen years so as to establish myself and what we were trying to do in a local community. I am telling you this only to explain that, although I do not know much about text-book education, I know a lot about schools and what goes on in them. And this novel was written as a cautionary tale for teachers – a sort of evangelical tract. Well it started off with this noble theme in mind but . . . well it became and odd sort of love story. J.L. Carr, 1988

This was meant to be a serious report on English education by someone who'd laboured, man and boy (I began aged 18) in its vineyard. But because it didn't speak with measured tone and slow, not many readers took it seriously. Yet, if you bother to take stock, it covers just about most things, the bigger issues, the irritating details. I have written this to make this book more valuable in 2081. Jim

There is more in this than the radio series. Frankly, the original idea was evangelical - a sort of text book for teachers written by a teacher (for a change) but it got away from me: I became too interested in some of the people in it. And then there was Emma Foxberrow - she was an awful disruption! One last detail - in the early part of the story there is an on-going business of a moveable spanner. Every bit of that is true. It befell me in B'ham.

This set out to be a text book for teachers & anyone interested in the English education system. But I'm afraid Miss Foxberrow took over early on & dissolved things. However, much of this is true, unbelievable as it may seem.

It was meant to be an evangelical tract but it escaped.

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Front cover

George Harpole is a conscientious young man, a budding pillar of society who looks forward to a term as temporary headmaster of his primary school. But when he realizes he has a school of infant delinquents staffed by hide-bound eccentrics, adminstered by bureaucratic busybodies and interfered with by self-seeking councillors, he loses his patience, his conventialism and, ultimately, his job.

Egged on by the daunting, delectable Miss Emma Foxberrow, M.A. (Cantab), the new supply teacher, Harpole tackles his problems with uncharacteristic radicalism, to the horror of the L.E.A., the parents and his colleagues, and with chaotic, hilarious results.

Teachers' World - The astonishing thing about The Harpole Report is that after you have put it down you realise that although your ribs ache, it's really a serious report on primary education in Britain.

New Statesman - Grotesquely farcical

Times Literary Supplement - Absolutely splendid

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Front cover

Until finally, when his career is in ruins, the very personable Miss Emma Foxberrow, M.A. (Cantab), can declare triumphantly, 'The Old Harpole is dead and a New Man is risen up! You have advanced back to your Glorious State of Original Sin!'

Harpole's progress is charted through letters, memoranda, diaries and reports which reveals a memorable assortment of characters lurking in the English educational undergrowth, from a rival headmaster whose wife has run off with a hefty sixth-former to the amazing family Widmerpool, bane of every school in town.

Daily Telegraph

A very funny book

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Front cover

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