manqués

The classics master is a quick literary shortcut to encapsulating a lonely, highly intelligent man dedicated to his subject, and often to his pupils. They are never in fiction — and rarely in real life — female. They are often dons manqués — men who, due to a personality fault, or an unfortunate incident with a boy, never made it as academics. And so they become, life Dr Rutherford, substitute dons at school, keen on building up one-to-one relationships with the pupils and dismissive of their contemporaries in the school common-room.