dg200128
Revision History
| Revision ID | Modified entities | Note | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| #6870 | His Yorkshire background is reflected in much of his fiction, notably in The Good Companions (1929), which first brought him to wide public notice. Many of his plays are structured around a time slip, and he went on to develop a new theory of time, with different dimensions that link past, present, and future.
In 1940, he broadcast a series of short propaganda radio shows that were credited with strengthening civilian morale during the Battle of Britain. His left-wing beliefs brought him into conflict with the government, and influenced the birth of the Welfare State. The programme was eventually cancelled by the BBC for being too critical of the Government.
He is perhaps best known for his 1945 play An Inspector Calls.
Priestley's first major success came with a novel, The Good Companions (1929), which earned him the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction and made him a national figure. His next novel, Angel Pavement (1930), further established him as a successful novelist. However, some critics were less than complimentary about his work, and Priestley threatened legal action against Graham Greene for what he took to be a defamatory portrait of him in the novel Stamboul Train (1932).
In 1934 he published the travelogue English Journey, an account of what he saw and heard while travelling through the country in the depths of the Depression.
Priestley is today seen as having, as was not uncommon at the time, a prejudice against the Irish, as is shown in his work, English Journey: "A great many speeches have been made and books written on the subject of what England has done to Ireland... I should be interested to hear a speech and read a book or two on the subject of what Ireland has done to England... if we do have an Irish Republic as our neighbour, and it is found possible to return her exiled citizens, what a grand clearance there will be in all the western ports, from the Clyde to Cardiff, what a fine exit of ignorance and dirt and drunkenness and disease."
He moved into a new genre and became equally well known as a dramatist. Dangerous Corner (1932) was the first of many plays that would enthrall West End theatre audiences. His best-known play is An Inspector Calls (1945). His plays are more varied in tone than the novels, several being influenced by J. W. Dunne's theory of time, which plays a part in the plots of Dangerous Corner (1932) and Time and the Conways".
In 1940, Priestley wrote an essay for Horizon magazine, where he criticised George Bernard Shaw for his support of Stalin: "Shaw presumes that his friend Stalin has everything under control. Well, Stalin may have made special arrangements to see that Shaw comes to no harm, but the rest of us in Western Europe do not feel quite so sure of our fate, especially those of us who do not share Shaw's curious admiration for dictators."
During the Second World War, he was a regular broadcaster on the BBC. The Postscript, broadcast on Sunday night through 1940 and again in 1941, drew peak audiences of 16 million; only Churchill was more popular with listeners. Grahame Greene wrote that Priestley "became in the months after Dunkirk a leader second only in importance to Mr. Churchill. And he gave us what our other leaders have always failed to give us – an ideology. But his talks were cancelled. It was thought that this was the effect of complaints from Churchill that they were too left-wing; however, in 2015 Priestley's son said in a talk on the latest book being published about his father's life that it was in fact Churchill's Cabinet that brought about the cancellation by supplying negative reports on the broadcasts to Churchill.
Priestley chaired the 1941 Committee, and in 1942 he was a co-founder of the socialist Common Wealth Party. The political content of his broadcasts and his hopes of a new and different Britain after the war influenced the politics of the period and helped the Labour Party gain its landslide victory in the 1945 general election. Priestley himself, however, was distrustful of the state and dogma, though he did stand for the Cambridge University constituency in 1945.
Priestley's name was on Orwell's list, a list of people which George Orwell prepared in March 1949 for the Information Research Department (IRD), a propaganda unit set up at the Foreign Office by the Labour government. Orwell considered these people to have pro-communist leanings and therefore to be inappropriate to write for the IRD.
He was a founding member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in 1958.
In 1960, Priestley published Literature and Western Man, a 500-page survey of Western literature in all its genres, including Russia and the United States but excluding Asia, from the second half of the 15th century to the present (the last author discussed is Thomas Wolfe).
His interest in the problem of time led him to publish an extended essay in 1964 under the title of Man and Time (Aldus published this as a companion to Carl Jung's Man and His Symbols). In this book he explored in depth various theories and beliefs about time as well as his own research and unique conclusions, including an analysis of the phenomenon of precognitive dreaming, based in part on a broad sampling of experiences gathered from the British public, who responded enthusiastically to a televised appeal he made while being interviewed in 1963 on the BBC programme, Monitor.
—dg200128 | 2017-12-19 09:33:32 | |
| #6856 | William Saroyan was born in Fresco, California, as the son of an Armenian Immigrant. His father moved to New Jersey in 1905 where he was forced to take farm labouring work.
After going through the writings of his father Saroyan decided to became a writer. His first collected stories were published in "The Overland Monthly". Many of his stories were based on his childhood experiences among the Armenian-American fruit growers of the San Joaquin Valley or dealt with tge rootlessness of the immigrant.
He has been described in a Dickinson College news release as "one of the most prominent literary figures of the mid-20th century" and by Stephen Fry as "one of the most underrated writers of the [20th] century." Fry suggests that "he takes his place naturally alongside Hemingway, Steinbeck and Faulkner."
As a writer, Saroyan made his breakthrough in Story magazine with "The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze" (1934), the title taken from the nineteenth century song of the same title. The protagonist is a young, starving writer who tries to survive in a Depression-ridden society.
—dg200128 | 2017-12-19 05:31:43 | |
| #6855 | Son of diplomat ,Sir Terence Mervyn Rattigan received his education at Harrow ,Trinity College and Oxford.His career as a play-wright began rather early in his life .His plays had a middle class and middle tilt in their contents,themes and characters. His personal life was rather troubled but his career as a playwright was very successful.
The present extract is from his play "The Browning Version" which is about a repressesd and unpolpular school master Mr Crocker Harris .Among his other plays are The Winslow Boy ,The Deep Blue Sea and Ross .French without Tears a comedy was his first West End Success.—dg200128 | 2017-12-19 04:59:00 | |
| #6854 | Khushwant Singh a famous Indian writer of english was born in 1915 and received his education in Lahore,Delhi and London.He is often referred to as a versatile reconteur,humorist,commentator,editor,shortstory writer and a novelist.He as an easy narrative style.His syndicated columns-"With Malice towards One and All" and "This Above All" are extremely popular.Among his famous books are the two volume 'History of the Sikhs'.
His novel 'A Train to Pakistan' -based on turmoil and trauma of the partition of India and Pakistan has been made into a full length feature film.—dg200128 | 2017-12-19 04:41:55 | |
| #6656 | When i was searching about creator then i got all information about mr.richard and creator also—dg200128 | 2017-12-17 09:50:44 |