Terence Rattigan: The Man and His Work

2010 | Biography

'Rattigan's work is a sustained assault on English Middle-Class Values: fear of Emotional Commitment, terror in the face of passion, apprehension about sex. Few dramatists this century have written with more understanding about the human heart.' Michael Billington In his lifetime he was a well known public figure, yet despite his friendships with people such as Noel Coward he always publicly hit his homosexuality. In this extensively revised biography Michael Darlow has, for the first time, been able to describe this important aspect of his life and fully consider it in relation to his work. Plays such as French Without Tears, The Browning Version, Separate Tables and The Winslow Boy are some of the best loved and most memorable plays of the century. Yet even in his lifetime Rattigan was regarded as somehow artistically suspect. Revised to celebrate the centenary of Rattigan's birth, this portrait of a complex and fascinating man unfolds to provide a compelling case for him to be accepted as one of the great dramatists of the last century.

Michael Darlow (Author)