Born in 1911, a scholar at Harrow and at Trinity College, Oxford, Terence Rattigan had his first long-running hit in the West End at the age of twenty-five: French Without Tears (1936). His next play, After the Dance (1939), opened to euphoric reviews yet closed under the gathering clouds of war, but with Flare Path (1942) Rattigan embarked on an almost unbroken series of successes, with most plays running in the West End for at least a year and several making the transition to Broadway: While the Sun Shines (1943), Love in Idleness (1944), The Winslow Boy (1946), The Browning Version (performed in double-bill with Harlequinade, 1948), Who is Sylvia? (1950), The Deep Blue Sea (1952), The Sleeping Prince (1953) and Separate Tables (1954). From the mid-fifties, with the advent of the ‘Angry Young Men’, he enjoyed less success on stage, though Ross (1960) and In Praise of Love (1973) were well received. As well as seeing many of his plays turned into successful films, Rattigan wrote a number of original plays for television from the fifties onwards. He was knighted in 1971 and died in 1977.