The English Girls

Maggie Pool’s long and  distinguished teaching career as Head of English at Layters Girls School is seriously threatened when a new member of staff is appointed and a teacher in her department embarks on a love affair with one of his students. Maggie’s memories of this affair and the tragic consequences for all who become involved are triggered when she receives an unexpected letter many years after her retirement from teaching. 

A contemporary story of forbidden love is also closely entwined with one from our  literary past in this novel  about ideological conflict and the power of imagination in the world of love, literature and education.


Sue Dooks was born and brought up twenty five miles from London in leafy Buckinghamshire and for over thirty years she taught in one of its grammar schools. During that  time she became both Head of the English Department  –  a post she held for more than twenty years – as well as an Assistant Head. Her most important aim as a teacher was to enable her students to love the study of literature as much as she did, and she feels very privileged in her career to have been able to remain so close to the world of books. In many ways The English Girls is a tribute to those influences and that way of life.