John Boynton Priestley

Arthur Birling, a prosperous manufacturer in the early years of this century, is holding a family dinner party to celebrate his daughter's engagement. Into this cosy scene intrudes the harsh figure of a police inspector investigating the suicide of a young working-class woman, every member of the family turns out to have a shameful secret which links them with her death.

An Inspector Calls

4m, 6f / Scenery: Interior The Conways are having a party to celebrate Kay's twenty first birthday. Kay hopes to be a novelist. Hazel, the beauty, anticipates a romantic marriage. Madge wants to reform the world and marry the dashing young family lawyer. Carol, the baby of the family, spreads good cheer while Robin, back from war, is certain to have a good career. Alan is content to be an armchair philosopher. The nitwit mother has high hopes for them all. At the party Kay, with frightening clarity, sees her family twenty years in the future. They are petty, mean, and unfulfilled. Only Kay and her calm brother realize time is relative and there is something fine and worthwhile beyond.

A Play in Three Acts

Time and the Conways

The Old Dark House

Festival at Farbridge

A humorous portrayal of how mothers are treated in a family. It was first performed as a play in 1953. 3 women, 2 men

A Comedy in One Act

Mother's Day

The members of an eminently respectable British family reveal their true natures over the course of an evening in which they are subjected to a routine inquiry into the suicide of a young girl.

Play in Three Acts

Wonder Hero

A Play in 3 Acts

I Have Been Here Before

Charles Dickens

Grandes esperanças

The Good Companions

In the years following the Second World War, there didn't seem much to smile about, but as J.B. Priestley illustrated in the classic 1949 'Delight', there are many joys to be found in even the simplest things.

Delight

Three magicians let a man look at his past to better understand his present.

The Magicians

Selected and with a Pref. by Susan Cooper

Essays of Five Decades

J. B. Priestley

Essays on England in the war, based on the author's radio broadcasts from London in 1940.

John Boynton Priestley

About

Books

Join the club