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 this implication. In the play, Rattigan quotes from actual parliamentary debates and court transcripts but makes major changes to the characters and the timing of events. In the play, it was Ronnie's father who first believed in his innocence; in fact, it was his older brother, Martin, who persuaded their father, and used his influence as an MP to involve Carson in the case. Martin Archer-Shee junior was a very different character from the failed university student, Dickie Winslow, of the play. He was a Conservative Member of Parliament from 1910, and in his mid-thirties at the time of the