Terence Rattigan Terence Rattigan Sir Terence Mervyn Rattigan, CBE (10 June 191130 November 1977) was a British dramatist. He was one of England's most popular mid twentieth century dramatists. His plays are typically set in an upper-middle-class background. He wrote "The Winslow Boy" (1946), "The Browning Version" (1948), "The Deep Blue Sea" (1952) and "Separate Tables" (1954), among many others. A troubled homosexual, who saw himself as an outsider, his plays centred on issues of sexual frustration, failed relationships, and a world of repression and reticence. Terence Rattigan was born in 1911 in South Kensington, London, of Irish Protestant extraction. He had
Terence Rattigan of the Second World War scuppered any chances of a long run. Shortly before the war, Rattigan had written (together with Anthony Goldsmith) 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. During the war, Rattigan served in the Royal Air Force as a tail gunner; his experiences helped inspire "Flare Path" and he was released from the service to help rewrite it as a film screenplay (which eventually appeared as "The Way to the Stars" in 1945). He