‘Twenty five years a teacher. If I’d committed a double murder I’d have done less time.’

A scrabrously funny look inside the classroom from a teacher who has had enough of a system that is on its knees and with morale at rock-bottom. Intoning his mantra of ‘July, July, July!’ the anonymous author – still a serving secondary school teacher – ranges over his teaching career from his student practice to the present day: from colleagues praying for a minor heart attacks so they can get six months paid leave and a foot in the door of early retirement, to the increasing alienation of young people and the alarming rise in mental health issues and self-harming.

Reasoning that it’s either laugh or cry, this teacher does both. Heartfelt and seriously funny, Class War is a diary account written as therapy, and an inside look like no other at the pressure-cooker that is a secondary school.

Hilarious, heart-breaking and impassioned, this is a book about the value and importance of good teachers and good schools in a world where lack of resources and ever increasing demands place intolerable strains on them, Class War is a heartfelt portrait of the profession of teaching and a state education system where no one should be left behind but too many are.