The Winslow Boy
Encyclopedia
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
play
Play (theatre)
A play is a form of literature written by a playwright, usually consisting of scripted dialogue between characters, intended for theatrical performance rather than just reading. There are rare dramatists, notably George Bernard Shaw, who have had little preference whether their plays were performed...
from 1946 by Terence Rattigan
Terence Rattigan
Sir Terence Mervyn Rattigan CBE was one of England's most popular 20th-century dramatists. His plays are generally set in an upper-middle-class background...
based on an actual incident
George Archer-Shee
George Archer-Shee became a British cause célèbre in 1910 when the issue of whether he stole a five shilling postal order ended up being decided in the High Court....
in the Edwardian era, which took place at the Royal Naval College
Osborne House
Osborne House is a former royal residence in East Cowes, Isle of Wight, UK. The house was built between 1845 and 1851 for Queen Victoria and Prince Albert as a summer home and rural retreat....
, Osborne
Osborne House
Osborne House is a former royal residence in East Cowes, Isle of Wight, UK. The house was built between 1845 and 1851 for Queen Victoria and Prince Albert as a summer home and rural retreat....
.
Performance History
The play's London premiere was in 1946, and it featured Emlyn WilliamsEmlyn Williams
George Emlyn Williams, CBE , known as Emlyn Williams, was a Welsh dramatist and actor.-Biography:He was born into a Welsh-speaking, working class family in Mostyn, Flintshire....
, Mona Washbourne
Mona Washbourne
Mona Washbourne was an English actress of stage, film and television.Mona Washbourne began her entertaining career training as a concert pianist. While performing on stage in the early 1920s, she found that she liked acting and became an actress...
, Angela Baddeley
Angela Baddeley
Angela Baddeley, CBE , born Madeline Angela Clinton-Baddeley, was an English actress best remembered for her role as Mrs Bridges in the period drama Upstairs, Downstairs...
, Kathleen Harrison
Kathleen Harrison
Kathleen Harrison was a prolific English character actress best remembered for her role as Mrs. Huggett in a trio of British post-war comedies about a working class family's misadventures. To modern viewers she is better remembered as Mrs...
, Frank Cellier
Frank Cellier (actor)
Frank Cellier was an English actor. Early in his career, he toured in Britain, Germany, the West Indies, America and South Africa. In the 1920s, he became known in the West End for Shakespearean character roles, among others, and also directed some plays in which he acted...
, Jack Watling
Jack Watling
Jack Watling was a British actor.-Early life:Watling trained at the Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts as a child and made his stage debut in Where the Rainbow Ends at the Holborn Empire in 1936...
and Clive Morton
Clive Morton
Clive Morton was an English actor who made many screen appearances, especially on television. In 1955, he appeared in Laurence Olivier's Richard III and is recalled by fans of Doctor Who for his role as Trenchard in The Sea Devils in 1972...
. It was under the direction of Glen Byam Shaw
Glen Byam Shaw
Glen Byam Shaw was an English actor and theatre director, known for his dramatic productions in the 1950s and his operatic productions in the 1960s and later....
.
The play's Broadway premiere was in 1947, and it featured Frank Allenby as Sir Robert, Alan Webb
Alan Webb (actor)
-Biography and Career:Educated at Bramcote School, Scarborough, and RN Colleges Osborne and Dartmouth. He served in the Royal Navy.Webb's early days were spent performing with the Lena Ashwell Players , J. B. Fagan's Oxford Players , The Croydon Repertory Company , and the Old Vic-Sadler's Wells...
as Arthur Winslow, and Valerie White as Catherine Winslow.
The play was later made into a famous 1948 film
The Winslow Boy (1948 film)
The Winslow Boy is a 1948 film adaptation of Terence Rattigan's play The Winslow Boy. It was made by De Grunwald Productions and distributed by the British Lion Film Corporation. It was directed by Anthony Asquith and produced by Anatole de Grunwald with Teddy Baird as associate producer. The...
directed by Anthony Asquith
Anthony Asquith
Anthony Asquith was a leading English film director. He collaborated successfully with playwright Terence Rattigan on The Winslow Boy and The Browning Version , among other adaptations...
, starring Robert Donat
Robert Donat
Robert Donat was an English film and stage actor. He is best-known for his roles in Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps and Goodbye, Mr...
as Sir Robert Morton KC, Sir Cedric Hardwicke as Arthur Winslow, and Margaret Leighton as Catherine Winslow. There was also a 1999 version
The Winslow Boy (1999 film)
The Winslow Boy is a 1999 period drama film directed by David Mamet. Starring Nigel Hawthorne, Rebecca Pidgeon, Jeremy Northam and Gemma Jones. Set in London before World War I, it depicts a family defending the honor of its young son at all cost. The screenplay was adapted by Mamet based on ...
, directed by David Mamet
David Mamet
David Alan Mamet is an American playwright, essayist, screenwriter and film director.Best known as a playwright, Mamet won a Pulitzer Prize and received a Tony nomination for Glengarry Glen Ross . He also received a Tony nomination for Speed-the-Plow . As a screenwriter, he received Oscar...
, and starring Nigel Hawthorne
Nigel Hawthorne
Sir Nigel Barnard Hawthorne, CBE was an English actor, perhaps best remembered for his role as Sir Humphrey Appleby, the Permanent Secretary in the 1980s sitcom Yes Minister and the Cabinet Secretary in its sequel, Yes, Prime Minister. For this role he won four BAFTA Awards during the 1980s in the...
as Arthur Winslow, Jeremy Northam
Jeremy Northam
Jeremy Philip Northam is an English actor. He is best known for his roles as Ivor Novello in the 2001 film Gosford Park, as Dean Martin in the 2002 television movie Martin and Lewis, and as Thomas More on the Showtime series The Tudors...
as Morton, and Rebecca Pidgeon
Rebecca Pidgeon
Rebecca Pidgeon is a British actress and singer-songwriter. She has maintained a recording career while also acting on stage and in feature films. She is married to the American writer and director David Mamet.-Early life:...
as Catherine. The play has also been adapted for television, including a 1990 version starring Gordon Jackson
Gordon Jackson (actor)
Gordon Cameron Jackson, OBE was a Scottish Emmy Award-winning actor best remembered for his roles as the butler Angus Hudson in Upstairs, Downstairs and George Cowley, the head of CI5, in The Professionals....
as Arthur Winslow, Ian Richardson
Ian Richardson
Ian William Richardson CBE was a Scottish actor best known for his portrayal of the Machiavellian Tory politician Francis Urquhart in the BBC's House of Cards trilogy. He was also a leading Shakespearean stage actor....
as Morton and Emma Thompson
Emma Thompson
Emma Thompson is a British actress, comedian and screenwriter. Her first major film role was in the 1989 romantic comedy The Tall Guy. In 1992, Thompson won multiple acting awards, including an Academy Award and a BAFTA Award for Best Actress, for her performance in the British drama Howards End...
as Catherine.
Background
Set against the strict codes of conduct and manners of the age, The Winslow Boy is based on a father's fight to clear his son's name after the boy is expelled from Osborne Naval College for stealing a five-shilling postal orderPostal Orders of Great Britain
The United Kingdom was the first country in the world to issue postal orders on 1 January 1881. They were the brainchild of the President of the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce, John Skirrow Wright which was to enable poorer people to buy goods and services by post, as they were unlikely to have...
. To clear the boy's name was imperative for the family's honour; had they not done so, they would have been shunned by their peers and society. The boy's life would have been wrecked by the stain on his character.
The play was inspired by an actual event, which set a legal precedent
Precedent
In common law legal systems, a precedent or authority is a principle or rule established in a legal case that a court or other judicial body may apply when deciding subsequent cases with similar issues or facts...
: the case of Stonyhurst College
Stonyhurst College
Stonyhurst College is a Roman Catholic independent school, adhering to the Jesuit tradition. It is located on the Stonyhurst Estate near the village of Hurst Green in the Ribble Valley area of Lancashire, England, and occupies a Grade I listed building...
alumnus George Archer-Shee
George Archer-Shee
George Archer-Shee became a British cause célèbre in 1910 when the issue of whether he stole a five shilling postal order ended up being decided in the High Court....
, a cadet at Osborne in 1908, who was accused of stealing a postal order from a fellow cadet. His elder brother Major
Major
Major is a rank of commissioned officer, with corresponding ranks existing in almost every military in the world.When used unhyphenated, in conjunction with no other indicator of rank, the term refers to the rank just senior to that of an Army captain and just below the rank of lieutenant colonel. ...
Martin Archer-Shee, was convinced of his innocence, and persuaded his father (also called Martin) to engage lawyers. The most respected barrister of the day, Sir Edward Carson was also persuaded of his innocence, and insisted on the case coming to court. On the fourth day of the trial, the Solicitor General
Solicitor General for England and Wales
Her Majesty's Solicitor General for England and Wales, often known as the Solicitor General, is one of the Law Officers of the Crown, and the deputy of the Attorney General, whose duty is to advise the Crown and Cabinet on the law...
accepted that Archer-Shee was innocent, and ultimately the family was paid compensation. George Archer-Shee died in the First World War and his name is inscribed on the war memorial in the village of Woodchester
Woodchester
Woodchester is a Gloucestershire village in the Nailsworth Valley, a valley in the South Cotswolds in England, running southwards from Stroud along the A46 road to Nailsworth....
, in Gloucestershire
Gloucestershire
Gloucestershire is a county in South West England. The county comprises part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the flat fertile valley of the River Severn, and the entire Forest of Dean....
, where his parents lived, as well as on the memorial plaque outside the Catholic St Mary on the Quay
St Mary on the Quay
St. Mary on the Quay is a church in central Bristol, England.It was built between 1839 and 1843, by Richard Shackleton Pope, as a Catholic apostolic chapel for the Irvingite congregation, and is now a Roman Catholic church....
church in Bristol
Bristol
Bristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, with an estimated population of 433,100 for the unitary authority in 2009, and a surrounding Larger Urban Zone with an estimated 1,070,000 residents in 2007...
city centre, where he had been an altar boy.
Plot
Ronnie Winslow, a fourteen-year-old cadetCadet
A cadet is a trainee to become an officer in the military, often a person who is a junior trainee. The term comes from the term "cadet" for younger sons of a noble family.- Military context :...
at the Royal Naval College, is accused of the theft of a five-shilling postal order
Postal Order
In the United Kingdom , a Postal Order is used for sending money through the mail. In the United States, this is known as a Postal money order...
. An internal enquiry, conducted without notice to his family and without benefit of representation, finds him guilty, and his father, Arthur Winslow, is "requested to withdraw" his son from the college (the formula of the day for expulsion). Winslow believes Ronnie's claim of innocence and, with the help of his suffragette
Suffragette
"Suffragette" is a term coined by the Daily Mail newspaper as a derogatory label for members of the late 19th and early 20th century movement for women's suffrage in the United Kingdom, in particular members of the Women's Social and Political Union...
daughter Catherine and his friend and family solicitor
Solicitor
Solicitors are lawyers who traditionally deal with any legal matter including conducting proceedings in courts. In the United Kingdom, a few Australian states and the Republic of Ireland, the legal profession is split between solicitors and barristers , and a lawyer will usually only hold one title...
Desmond Curry, launches a concerted effort to clear Ronnie's name. This is no small matter, as under English law, Admiralty decisions were official acts of the government, which could not be sued without its consent—traditionally expressed by the Attorney General
Attorney General
In most common law jurisdictions, the attorney general, or attorney-general, is the main legal advisor to the government, and in some jurisdictions he or she may also have executive responsibility for law enforcement or responsibility for public prosecutions.The term is used to refer to any person...
responding to a petition of right
Petition of right
In English law, a petition of right was a remedy available to subjects to recover property from the Crown.Before the Crown Proceedings Act 1947, the British Crown could not be sued in contract...
with the formula "Let right be done".
The Winslows succeed in engaging the most highly sought after barrister
Barrister
A barrister is a member of one of the two classes of lawyer found in many common law jurisdictions with split legal professions. Barristers specialise in courtroom advocacy, drafting legal pleadings and giving expert legal opinions...
in England at the time, Sir Robert Morton, known also to be a shrewd opposition Member of Parliament
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...
. Catherine had expected Sir Robert to decline the case, or at best to treat it as a political football; instead, he is coolly matter-of-fact about having been persuaded of Ronnie's innocence by his responses to questioning (in fact, a form of cross-examination, to see how young Ronnie would hold up in court) in the presence of his family, and is shown mustering his political forces in the House of Commons
British House of Commons
The House of Commons is the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which also comprises the Sovereign and the House of Lords . Both Commons and Lords meet in the Palace of Westminster. The Commons is a democratically elected body, consisting of 650 members , who are known as Members...
on the Winslows' behalf with little concern for the cost to his faction. Catherine remains unconvinced of Sir Robert's sincerity, perhaps not least because of his record of opposition to the cause of women's suffrage
Women's suffrage
Women's suffrage or woman suffrage is the right of women to vote and to run for office. The expression is also used for the economic and political reform movement aimed at extending these rights to women and without any restrictions or qualifications such as property ownership, payment of tax, or...
, but also due to his dispassionate manner in the midst of the Winslow family's financial sacrifices.
The government is strongly disinclined to allow the case to proceed, claiming that it is a distraction from pressing Admiralty business; but in the face of public sympathy garnered through Winslow and Catherine's efforts, and of Sir Robert's impassioned speech on the verge of defeat in the Commons, the government yields, and the case is allowed to come to court. At trial, Sir Robert (working together with Desmond Curry and his firm) is able to discredit much of the supposed evidence. The Admiralty, certainly embarrassed and presumably no longer confident of Ronnie's guilt, abruptly withdraws all charges against him, proclaiming him entirely innocent.
Although the family has won the case at law and lifted the cloud over Ronnie, it has taken its toll on the rest. His father's physical health has deteriorated under the strain, as to some degree has the happiness of the Winslows' home. The costs of the suit and the publicity campaign have eaten up his older brother Dickie's Oxford tuition, and hence his chance at a career in the Civil Service
Civil service
The term civil service has two distinct meanings:* A branch of governmental service in which individuals are employed on the basis of professional merit as proven by competitive examinations....
, as well as Catherine's marriage settlement. Her fiancé John Watherstone has broken off the engagement in the face of opposition from his father (an Army Colonel), forcing her to consider a sincere and well-intentioned offer of marriage from Desmond, whom she does not love. Sir Robert has also declined appointment as Lord Chief Justice, rather than drop the case. However, the play ends with a suggestion that romance may yet blossom between Sir Robert and Catherine, who acknowledges that she has misjudged him all along.
Differences between reality and fiction
In the play, Rattigan quotes from actual parliamentary debates and court transcripts, but makes major changes to the characters and the timing of events, moving them closer to the start of World War IWorld War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
. He also introduces several fictional characters: a sister, Catherine Winslow, a suffragette
Suffragette
"Suffragette" is a term coined by the Daily Mail newspaper as a derogatory label for members of the late 19th and early 20th century movement for women's suffrage in the United Kingdom, in particular members of the Women's Social and Political Union...
and, as we learn in the final lines of the play, a potential future politician; her erstwhile fiancé, John Watherstone; and Desmond Curry, a solicitor who eventually proposes to Catherine. According to the 1999 film's website, in reality, Archer-Shee did have a sister, though Rattigan altered the character.
Martin Archer-Shee junior was a very different character from the failed university student, Dickie Winslow, of the play. He was a Conservative Member of Parliament
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...
from 1910, and in his mid-thirties at the time of the case.
Arthur Winslow was also made less prosperous than his factual counterpart.
Whilst the play gives only indirect reference to the court case and the parliamentary debates, the 1948 film introduces scenes from these events that are not in the play.
Film adaptations
The play has been adapted for film twice, in 1948The Winslow Boy (1948 film)
The Winslow Boy is a 1948 film adaptation of Terence Rattigan's play The Winslow Boy. It was made by De Grunwald Productions and distributed by the British Lion Film Corporation. It was directed by Anthony Asquith and produced by Anatole de Grunwald with Teddy Baird as associate producer. The...
and 1999
The Winslow Boy (1999 film)
The Winslow Boy is a 1999 period drama film directed by David Mamet. Starring Nigel Hawthorne, Rebecca Pidgeon, Jeremy Northam and Gemma Jones. Set in London before World War I, it depicts a family defending the honor of its young son at all cost. The screenplay was adapted by Mamet based on ...
.