‘Its unrelenting tension, and its regard for human decency in a vast world of human waste, are impressive and, even now, moving’ Clive Barnes. R.C. Sherriff’s Journey’s End remains one of the most remarkable anti-war plays in the English language, offering an unflinching vision of life in the trenches towards the end of the First World War, published in Penguin Classics.
The play centres on a group of British officers serving on the front line, and opens in a dugout in France. When eighteen-year-old Raleigh — fresh from an English public school — joins the besieged company, he is reunited with Stanhope, his old friend and cricketing hero, only to find him dramatically changed by the realities of war.
Journey’s End premiered in 1928 with Laurence Olivier in the role of Stanhope, and was an immediate stage sensation. George Bernard Shaw hailed it as ‘useful [corrective] to the romantic conception of war’.
Sherriff (1896–1975) enlisted shortly after the outbreak of the First World War and served as a captain in the East Surrey regiment. An interest in amateur theatre drew him to writing after the war, though Journey’s End faced rejection from many theatre managements before its breakthrough single performance by the Incorporated Stage Society. Its enormous success allowed Sherriff to write full-time; his subsequent plays include Badger’s Green (1930), St Helena (1935) and The Long Sunset (1955), and he is equally remembered as a screenwriter on films such as The Invisible Man (1933), Goodbye Mr Chips (1933) and The Dam Busters (1955).
If you enjoyed Journey’s End, you might like Robert Graves’s Goodbye to All That, available in Penguin Modern Classics.
ISBN 13: 9780141183268
Author: R. C. Sherriff
