One of our Godsons will be studying J B Priestley’s An Inspector Calls when he returns to school in September, so we’ve been talking about the play and also about J B Priestley.
Then we all watched the BBC film and absolutely loved it. It’s such a brilliant adaptation, retaining all of the original themes whilst adding speed and depth to the characters and action. Watching it at this moment seemed particularly pertinent. One of the main themes of the play, if not the main theme, is social responsibility and the need for us to all look after each other. At a time when Margaret Thatcher’s statement that there is no such thing as society, is ringing more loudly in our ears than ever, the effects of not caring about others is brought home to us very sharply and clearly.
J B Priestley is a brilliant writer - novelist, dramatist and non-fiction. I came to his work quite late. When I was at university his novels filled rows of shelves in second hand bookshops and libraries - fat dark blue books with gold lettering, but he'd had his day and nobody read him anymore. Now he feels very relevant and his work is having a resurgence. I am so glad that I am reading and watching his seminal work. Some of this is thanks also to Stuart Maconie.
Stuart Maconie based his tour of England: Full English on Priestley's An English Journey, he used Priestley's 1930s itinerary as a guide to examine modern English identity, culture, and social changes 90 years later. Maconie regards Priestley’s English Journey as the finest book ever written about England and the English.
It is quite remarkable to realise that thanks to his famous Postscript broadcasts in 1940, heard by nearly half the adult population of Britain, JB Priestley was our second most important leader after Churchill, according to Graham Greene. The spirit expressed in those broadcasts was later embodied in the post-war establishment of the Welfare State, and later on Priestley's radical spirit saw him become one of the main figures in the creation of CND.
Priestley embodies so much that it good about England, much of which we are in danger of losing. I'm so pleased that schools are studying An Inspector Calls and sharing the messages and themes embodied in this wonderful play.