Jamaica Inn (film) pub on the edge of Bodmin Moor. The score was written by Eric Fenby. In 1819, Jamaica Inn is the headquarters of a gang of wreckers led by the innkeeper Joss Merlyn (Leslie Banks). The wreckers are responsible for a series of engineered shipwrecks in which they extinguish coastal warning beacons to cause ships to run aground on the rocky Cornish coast. They then kill the surviving sailors and steal the cargo from the wrecks. The beautiful young Irishwoman Mary Yellan (Maureen O'Hara) is travelling to Jamaica Inn in a carriage, but the driver is afraid to stop there and
Daphne du Maurier of the "nation's best-loved novel" on the BBC's 2003 survey The Big Read. Other significant works include "The Scapegoat", "The House on the Strand", and "The King's General". The last is set in the middle of the first and second English Civil Wars, written from the Royalist perspective of Du Maurier's adopted Cornwall. Several of Du Maurier's other novels have also been adapted for the screen, including "Jamaica Inn", "Frenchman's Creek", "Hungry Hill", and "My Cousin Rachel". The Hitchcock film "The Birds" (1963) is based on a treatment of one of her short stories, as is the film "Don't Look