Book description
When a town has invested all its savings in a project that a few people
discover to be fraudulent, is their responsibility to the public good or
to a moral standard? This is the dilemma which confronts the Directors
of St Mary’s Casino, when Henry Hodder, former caretaker of their
miraculous well, delivers his ultimatum.
The trouble began when Lord Colindale, millionaire newspaper-owner and
‘strong man’ of British politics, came down for a week-end to Colonel
Joyce’s country house. For a year Colindale had been forced out of
public life by crippling rheumatism which neither the specialists nor
the watering-places of Europe had been able to alleviate. By chance they
had visited the Wells of St Mary’s , once famed for their cures, now
derelict on Joyce’s land. At Henry Hodder’s insistence Lord Colindale
had drunk the flat, metallic water.
When it was announced in the newspapers that Colindale had been cured
by the waters and Colonel Joyce had given the well to the town, there
was no limit to the exploitation which the people, under Jim Blundell
the mayor, could envisage. But Henry, who had come to regard the well as
his own, knew the secret of its healing power. All set to put money in
his purse, he waited until the Casino was half-built before demanding
his share of the profits - as the price of silence. On his return from
the First World War, R C Sherriff settled in London, working as an
insurance agent and writing plays in the evening. Journey’s End
, inspired by Sherriff’s own experience of fighting, was his sixth play
but the first to be given a professional production. It was an
immediate, outstanding and phenomenal success. Thirty one separate
productions ran concurrently around the world and it was translated into
twenty six languages. Its success, however, was both a boon and a burden
- while it allowed him to give up the day job and devote himself
full-time to writing, it often overshadowed his later work or was used
as the yardstick against which it was measured unfavourably.
Fortunately for Sherriff he was not only a playwright but also a
novelist and a screenwriter. He wrote a best-selling novel, A
Fortnight In September
in 1931, and the screenplays for The Invisible Man
(1933), The Four Feathers
(1939) and classic films such as Goodbye Mr Chips
(1939), for which he received an Oscar nomination, and The Dambusters
(1955).
Although Sherriff was occupied as a playwright and screenwriter he did
not lose his urge to write novels and he followed the success of his
first novel with The Hopkins Manuscript
, Chedworth
, Another Year
and others. Now, while Journey’s End
continues to define Sherriff’s reputation, much of his work remains
ripe for rediscovery.
