Over Hill and Dale / Gervase Phinn

'Miss, who's that funny man at the back of the classroom?' So begins school-inspector Gervase Phinn's second year among the frankly spoken pupils and teachers of North Yorkshire. The sight of Gervase calmly getting out his notebook and pen provokes extreme reactions from children and adults alike. He finds himself unwillingly playing the stooge to Mrs Peterson's class of juniors, confronting a Mr Swan whose hunger for lunchtime exceeds his appetite for English and alarmingly disarmed by a pupil unsure whether he is 'learning' French or German.