23 Facts About Terence Rattigan

Sir Terence Mervyn Rattigan was a British dramatist and screenwriter.

Terence Rattigan was one of England's most popular mid-20th-century dramatists.

Terence Rattigan's plays are typically set in an upper-middle-class background.

Terence Rattigan wrote The Winslow Boy, The Browning Version, The Deep Blue Sea and Separate Tables, among many others.

Terence Rattigan was born in 1911 in South Kensington, London, of Irish extraction.

Terence Rattigan's father was Frank Rattigan CMG, a diplomat whose exploits included an affair with Princess Elisabeth of Romania which resulted in her having an abortion.

Terence Rattigan's birth certificate and his birth announcement in The Times indicate he was born on 9 June 1911.

Terence Rattigan was given no middle name, but he adopted the middle name "Mervyn" in early adulthood.

Terence Rattigan was educated at Sandroyd School from 1920 to 1925, at the time based in Cobham, Surrey, and Harrow School.

Terence Rattigan was a member of the Harrow School Officer Training Corps and organised a mutiny, informing the Daily Express.

Shortly before the war, Terence Rattigan had written a satire about Nazi Germany, Follow My Leader; the Lord Chamberlain refused to license it on grounds of offence to a foreign country, but it was performed from January 1940.

Terence Rattigan explained that he wrote his plays to please a symbolic playgoer, "Aunt Edna", someone from the well-off middle-class who had conventional tastes; his critics frequently used this character as the basis for belittling him.

However, Terence Rattigan changed his mind about staging it, and the original version proceeded.

Terence Rattigan was diagnosed with leukaemia in 1962 but seemingly recovered two years later.

In 1964, Terence Rattigan wrote to the playwright Joe Orton congratulating the latter on his very dark comedy Entertaining Mr Sloane, to which Terence Rattigan had escorted Vivien Leigh in its first week.

Terence Rattigan had previously been appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire, in June 1958.

Terence Rattigan moved back to Britain, where he experienced a minor revival in his reputation before his death.

Terence Rattigan died in Hamilton, Bermuda, from bone cancer on 30 November 1977, aged 66.

Terence Rattigan's cremated remains were deposited in the family vault at Kensal Green Cemetery.

In 1990, the British Library acquired Terence Rattigan's papers consisting of 300 volumes of correspondence and papers relating to his prose and dramatic works.

Terence Rattigan directed a major new production of Rattigan's final and rarely seen play Cause Celebre at The Old Vic in March 2011 as part of The Terence Rattigan Centenary year celebrations.

Many of Terence Rattigan's stage plays have been produced for radio by the BBC.

Terence Rattigan wrote or co-wrote the following screenplays from existing material by other writers:.