It takes place in a cram school for adults needing to acquire French for business reasons.

The play was inspired by a 1933 visit to a village called Marxzell in the Black Forest, where young English gentlemen went to cram German.

A critic thought it "gay, witty, thoroughly contemporary ... with a touch of lovable truth behind all its satire.

[4] In 1960 Rattigan himself refashioned the work as the musical Joie de Vivre but it was not a success.

[5] A television production was featured in the Saturday Playhouse TV series on 7 June 1958, with Denholm Elliott, Elvi Hale, Colin Broadley, Nicholas Parsons, and Andrew Irvine[6] and another in the BBC's Play of the Month series on 16 May 1976, starring Nigel Havers, Anthony Andrews and David Robb.