J. B. Priestley (1894 - 1984)

John Boynton Priestley was born in 1894 in Bradford, a city in the north of England, in what he famously described as an "ultra respectable" suburb, perhaps not too dissimilar from Brumley, the aspiring middle-class town in which the Birlings of An Inspector Calls reside. He studied at a grammar school, after which he spent some time working as a junior clerk in a wool office.

In 1914, he joined the army and served during World War I in the Duke of Wellington's Regiment, 10th Battalion. In 1916, he was wounded by mortar fire. In his volume of reminiscences, Margin Released (1962), he reflects on his early life and war service, and he is aggressively critical of the army, particularly the officer class (mainly made up of upper-class men).

He received an ex-officers' grant in 1919, and went to Trinity Hall, Cambridge, to study. After receiving his university education at Cambridge, Priestley moved to London in 1922, where he quickly gained a reputation as a writer. His first major success was a novel, The Good Companions (1929), which was in fact his third novel, and his fourth, Angel Pavement (1930) helped secure his international reputation. Priestley was criticized for his work, though, at one point even prompting him to launch a lawsuit against Graham Greene for a defamatory portrait of him in Greene's novel Stamboul Train (1932).

His reputation today, however, is mainly as a playwright, and he had a string of West End successes throughout the 1930s and 1940s, including Dangerous Corner (1932), Time and the Conways (1937) and, of course, An Inspector Calls (1947). Priestley was fascinated by the time theorist Dunne, and Dunne's influence can be felt in several of his plays, most of which bear to some degree a fascination with theories of time.

During the Second World War, Priestley was a very popular broadcaster on BBC Radio. He published collected versions of his broadcasts in two volumes, Britain Speaks (1940) and All England Listened (1968). Only Winston Churchill was listened to more than Priestley. Eventually, however, Priestley's broadcasts were cancelled, since Churchill's cabinet (a Conservative one) believed that they were too leftist. Priestley also chaired committees and lobbied for the socialist cause.

Priestley's broadcasts are often partly credited with the Labour Party's landslide victory in the 1945 general election, and they are often cited as evidence of the growing acceptance of leftist ideas in the United Kingdom. Priestley's politics can be seen throughout his work, particularly through the mouthpiece of the Inspector in An Inspector Calls.

His most significant work from the postwar period are his novels Bright Day (1946), Festival at Farbridge (1951), and The Image Men (1968). His most ambitious literary critical output, however, can be found in his reflections on theatre, The Art of the Dramatist (1957) and a wider survey, Literature and the Western Man (1960). He also published Journey Down a Rainbow (1955) and a play, Dragon's Mouth (1952), with his third wife, Jacquetta Hawkes. He also famously wrote a book on Edwardian England, The Edwardians.

Priestley was awarded the Order of Merit in 1977, seven years before his death in 1984.

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“I have always been delighted at the prospect of a new day, a fresh try, one more start, with perhaps a bit of magic waiting somewhere behind the morning.” 

“Like its politicians and its wars, society has the teenagers it deserves.” 

“We must beware the revenge of the starved senses, the embittered animal in its prison.” 

“The more elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate.” 

“One of the delights beyond the grasp of youth is that of Not Going. Not to have an invitation for the dance, the party, the picnic, the excursion is to be diminished. To have an invitation and then not to be able to go -- oh cursed spite! Now I do not care the rottenest fig whether I receive an invitation or not. After years of illusion, I finally decided I was missing nothing by Not Going. I no longer care whether I am missing anything or not.” 

“Most writers enjoy two periods of happiness—when a glorious idea comes to mind, and when a last page has been written and you haven't had time to know how much better it ought to be” 

“To show a child what has once delighted you, to find the child's delight added to your own, so that there is now a double delight seen in the glow of trust and affection, this is happiness.” 

“But the point is, now, at this moment, or any moment, we're only cross-sections of our real selves. What we really are is the whole stretch of ourselves, all our time, and when we come to the end of this life, all those selves, all our time, will be us - the real you, the real me. And then perhaps we'll find ourselves in another time, which is only another kind of dream.” 

“To say that these men paid their shillings to watch twenty-two hirelings kick a ball is merely to say that a violin is wood and catgut, that Hamlet is so much paper and ink.” 

“The way to write a book is the application of the seat of one's pants to the seat of one's chair” 

“The first fall of snow is not only an event, it is a magical event. You go to bed in one kind of a world and wake up in another quite different, and if this is not enchantment then where is it to be found?” 

― JB Priestley