Literary Birthday – 10 June – Terence Rattigan

Terence Rattigan was born on 10 June 1911 and died on 30 November 1977.

Terence Rattigan Quotes

1. A playwright must be his own audience. A novelist may lose his readers for a few pages; a playwright never dares lose his audience for a minute.
2. To see yourself as the world sees you may be very brave, but it can also be very foolish.
3. But the world is a dark enough place for even a little flicker to be welcome.
4. I will not insult you by trying to tell you that one day you will forget. I know as well as you that you will not. But, at least, in time you will not remember as fiercely as you do now – and I pray that that time may be soon.
5. To face life without hope can mean to live without despair.

Terence Rattigan was a British dramatist. He served as a flight lieutenant in the Coastal Command, RAF from 1940-1945. He was one of England’s most popular mid twentieth century dramatists. He was renowned for his well-crafted dramas of upper-class manners and repressed sexuality. He wrote plays like The Winslow Boy, The Browning Version, and The Deep Blue Sea. Rattigan was knighted in the Queen’s Birthday Honours of June 1971 for services to the theatre, being only the fourth playwright to be knighted in the 20th century. He had previously been appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE), in 1958.

Source for photo: Wikipedia, Allan Warren, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

by Amanda Patterson
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