Terence Rattigan was a friend of Spike Milligan's junior officer, Lieutenant Tony Goldsmith, who was killed in the Battle of Longstop Hill, whilst on observation post duty. Rattigan wrote an obituary of his friend and sent it to "The Times". A copy of it is in ""Rommel?" "Gunner Who?"", one of Milligan's war memoirs. After the war, Rattigan alternated between comedies and dramas, establishing himself as a major playwright: the most famous of which were "The Winslow Boy" (1946), "The Browning Version" (1948), "The Deep Blue Sea" (1952), and "Separate Tables" (1954). He believed in understated emotions and craftsmanship, which was deemed
The Winslow Boy 1948 film introduces scenes from these events that are not in the play. Rattigan also moved the events closer to the start of World War I, though the conflict is remote from the characters. In fact, both George and Martin Archer-Shee fought in the First World War; Martin commanded an infantry battalion, and George was killed, at the age of 19, at the First Battle of Ypres. His name is inscribed on the war memorial in the village of Woodchester, Gloucestershire, where his parents lived; on the memorial plaque outside the Catholic St Mary on the Quay church in Bristol