Desperate to stop the war, Christopher and his apostles turn the other cheek and in fact bring about peace. Morpurgo (Waiting for Anya), however, throws in a wholly unexpected twist in the form of Christopher, a Redlands boy who, by means of a few arguable ``miracles,'' secretly persuades several fellow students that he is Jesus. As the ``toffee-noses'' fight the ``oiks,'' even the headmaster and teachers take sides, and class hatred erupts full force. An innocent mistake triggers a series of brutal skirmishes between the privileged students of Redlands, an English boarding school, and the boys from the village. The war here is of the type waged primarily in fiction: an all-out battle at a boys' school. Despite the title, this is no historical novel, and the eponymous 18th-century war does not enter into the fervid plot.
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