Plays by R.C. Sherriff
Amateur productions prior to Journey’s End
A Hitch in the Proceedings (1921)
The Woods of Meadowside (1923)
Profit and Loss (1923)
Cornlow-in-the-Downs (1924)
Mr Bridie’s Finger (1926)
Journey’s End (1928), Apollo Theatre: with Laurence Olivier, George Zucco and H. G. Stoker. War play set in the trenches.
Badger’s Green (1930), Prince of Wales Theatre: with Felix Aylmer, Louis Goodrich and Horace Hodges. Cricketing comedy about a village under threat from developers.
Windfall (1933), Embassy Theatre: starring Margaret Watson and Hugh E. Wright. Mr Spooner wins a fortune and his friends and family won’t let him live his old life.
St Helena (1936), Old Vic Theatre: co-written by Jeanne de Casalis, starring Kenneth Kent. Napoleon’s last days in exile.
Miss Mabel (1948), Duchess Theatre: starring Mary Jerrold, Josephine Middleton and Clive Morton. Comedy with murder and a twist.
Home at Seven (1950), Wyndham’s Theatre: starring Ralph Richardson and Marion Spencer. An amnesiac bank clerk apparently commits murder during a missing 24 hours of his life.
The White Carnation (1953), Globe Theatre: with Ralph Richardson and Meriel Forbes. A lady librarian becomes the love object of a gentlemanly ghost emanating from a bombsite.
The Long Sunset (1955), Mermaid Theatre: with Joseph O’Connor and Josephine Wilson. Drama set among Romans who stayed behind when the legions left in 410 AD.
The Telescope (1957), Guildford Theatre: with Melvyn Hayes, Edward Woodward and Frank Finlay. Set in London Docklands about a go-ahead vicar, the play was later musicalised by Antony Hopkins as Johnny The Priest (1960).
A Shred of Evidence (1960), Duchess Theatre: with Jean Kent and Paul Medway in a melodrama about a man who can’t remember if he killed someone on the way home from a rugby club dinner.
Unpublished sources
Sherriff’s papers, letters and cuttings (held at Surrey History Centre (SHC) reference 2332 and 3813)
My Diary by R.C. Sherriff (held at Kingston Grammar School)
‘The Man From Esher And His Theatre Of War’ (producer Simon Hollis) BBC Radio 4
Online sources
The Long, Long Trail (www.1914-1918.net)
The 9/East Surrey Battalion war diary at the SHC (www.surreycc.gov.uk)
Reviews of 2004 Journey’s End production are quoted from Theatre Record
Books consulted
James Agate, My Theatre Talks (Barker, 1933)
J. M. Barrie, Courage (Hodder and Stoughton, 1922)
George Bishop, My Betters (Heinemann, 1957)
Brian Bond, The Unquiet Western Front (Cambridge University Press, 2002)
Rosa Maria Bracco, Merchants of Hope: British Middlebrow Writers of the First World War: 1919-1939 (Berg, 1993)
Malcolm Brown, The Imperial War Museum Book of 1918, Year of Victory (Sidgwick & Jackson, 1998)
Maurice Browne, Too Late to Lament (Gollancz, 1955)
Alan Clark, The Donkeys (Hutchinson, 1961)
George Corrigan, Mud, Blood and Poppycock (Cassell, 2003)
Noël Coward, Autobiography (Methuen, 1986)
James Curtis, James Whale (Scarecrow Press, 1982)
Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory (Oxford University Press, 1975)
Howard Goorney, The Theatre Workshop Story (Methuen, 1981)
Max Hastings, Bomber Command (Michael Joseph, 1979)
Samuel Hynes, A War Imagined: The First World War and English Culture (The Bodley Head, 1990)
Dominic Hibberd, The First World War (Macmillan, 1990)
Dominic Hibberd, Harold Monro: Poet of the New Age (Palgrave, 2001)
Richard Huggett, Binkie Beaumont: Éminence Grise of the West End Theatre 1933-1973 (Hodder & Stoughton, 1989)
Heinz Kosok, Theatre of War: The First World War in British and Irish Drama (Palgrave, 2007)
John Lewis-Stempel, Six Weeks: The Short and Gallant Life of the British Officer in the First World War (Orion, 2010)
Michael Lucas, The Journey’s End Battalion: the 9th East Surrey in The Great War (Pen & Sword, 2012)
William H. Mank, Hollywood’s Maddest Doctors (Midnight Marquee Press, 1999)
Charles Messenger, Call-to-Arms: the British Army 1914-18 (Cassell, 2005)
Martin Middlebrook, The Kaiser’s Battle (Allen Lane, 1978)
John Mills, Up In The Clouds, Gentlemen Please (Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1981)
Sean O’Casey, Rose and Crown (Macmillan, 1952)
George A Panichas, The Promise of Greatness: The War of 1914-1918 (Cassell, 1968)
Pearse & Sloman, History of the East Surrey Regiment (Spottiswoode, Ballantyne)
Gary Sheffield, Forgotten Victory (Headline, 2001)
R.C. Sherriff, No Leading Lady (Gollancz, 1968)
Victor Spinetti & Peter Rankin, Up Front (Portico, 2006)
Hilton Tims, Erich Maria Remarque: The Last Romantic (Constable, 2003)
Dan Todman, The Great War (Hambledon, 2005)
Ion Trewin, Alan Clark: the biography (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2009)
Richard van Emden and Victor Piuk, Famous: 1914-1918 (Pen & Sword, 2008)
Denis Winter, Death’s Men: Soldiers of the Great War (Allen Lane, 1978)