Playwright: RC Sherriff (1896 - 1975)
NewSPAL trustee Carol Hall writes below about RC Sherriff whose name may be unfamiliar but some of whose work will be much more well known. He had a life-long Surrey connection and the SPAL collection contains a selection of his work. Read on!
Robert Cedric Sherriff (known personally as Bob, and to the literary world simply as R C) lived in Esher for most of his life. He was born in Hampton Wick, Middlesex, on 6 June 1896 and was educated at Kingston Grammar School, where he won several sports prizes.
He enlisted into the army in November 1915 with the Artists Rifles and by September 1917 had obtained a commission with the East Surrey Regiment as a Second Lieutenant. He served in France until he was wounded in action on 2 August 1917 during the Battle of Passchendaele (Third Battle of Ypres), and was sent back to England for treatment.
He never returned to active service in France, and remained with the 3rd and 12th Battalions, the East Surrey Regiment, in Britain until he was demobilised in early 1919. Sherriff’s ‘Officer’s Record of Service’ shows that he retained the rank of Second Lieutenant throughout his active service in France. Later, while on home service, he was promoted firstly to Lieutenant on 5 March 1918, and later to Captain on 8 January 1919. In 1919 Sherriff unsuccessfully applied for a permanent commission in the army, and he returned to working for his pre-war employers in insurance. He devoted his free time to sport, creative writing and amateur dramatics.
He wrote at least six plays on an amateur basis, often as a means to raise funds for local causes and organisations: A Hitch in the Proceedings (1921); The Woods of Meadowside (1922}; Profit & Loss (1923); Cornlow in the Downs (1923); The Feudal System (1925); and
Mr Birdie’s Finger (1926). Sherriff also acted in several of these early plays, as did his sister Beryl Sherriff. Sadly we do not have copies of these early plays in the SPAL collection.
Then, in 1928 Sherriff wrote Journey’s End, his most spectacular dramatic success, which was performed for just two nights at the Apollo Theatre in London. The play was set in the trenches in March 1918, and was based on his own experiences and comrades at the Western Front. It was well received, and the play transferred to the Savoy Theatre in January 1929. It soon proved to be a critical and commercial success. None of his later plays achieved the success of Journey’s End.
In the 1930’s Sherriff also began his career as a screenplay writer and wrote and co-wrote various film scripts, including The Invisible Man (1933), One More River (1934) and The Road Back (1937). His biggest success came in 1939 when he was nominated, along with Eric Maschwitz and Claudine West, for an Academy Award for writing the adapted screenplay for Goodbye, Mr Chips. This career continued in the 1940’s with That Hamilton Woman (1941), This Above All (1942) and the Academy Award winning Mrs Miniver (1942), for which he was an uncredited writer. In 1956 Sherriff was nominated for BAFTA Best British Screenplay Awards for The Dam Busters and also The Night My Number Came Up, both of which had been released in 1955.
In 1944 Sherriff resumed play writing. Many of these later plays were performed in the West End. We have a number of these plays (in sets) in the SPAL collection: Miss Mabel (1949); Home at Seven (1950); Long Sunset (1955); Telescope (1959); Shred of Evidence (1961); and White Carnation (1954). It would be an interesting project for a play-reading group to read all these plays! He also wrote a number of novels, and a memoir No Leading Lady (1968), which is available (for reference only) in the SPAL collection.
Sherriff never married, and remained devoted to his mother, with whom he lived, latterly at his Esher house ‘Rosebriars’. He died in Kingston Hospital on 13 September 1975.
Sherriff bequeathed his papers to the Governors of Kingston Grammar School, while his royalties were divided between the School and the Scouts Association. He also bequeathed his home to Elmbridge Borough Council as an arts venue. It was later sold, and the capital realized on its sale established the RC Sherriff Trust (formerly the Rosebriars Trust), which supports the arts within Elmbridge Borough.
There are three collections of Sherriff’s papers held at the Surrey History Centre, all of which are now fully catalogued and accessible thanks to the Heritage Lottery Fund, and support from Surrey History Trust, Kingston Grammar School, The RC Sherriff Trust, and Curtis Brown Literary Agents.
See below for items by RC Sherriff in the SPAL collection available for hire:
NewSPAL trustee Carol Hall writes below about RC Sherriff whose name may be unfamiliar but some of whose work will be much more well known. He had a life-long Surrey connection and the SPAL collection contains a selection of his work. Read on!
Robert Cedric Sherriff (known personally as Bob, and to the literary world simply as R C) lived in Esher for most of his life. He was born in Hampton Wick, Middlesex, on 6 June 1896 and was educated at Kingston Grammar School, where he won several sports prizes.
He enlisted into the army in November 1915 with the Artists Rifles and by September 1917 had obtained a commission with the East Surrey Regiment as a Second Lieutenant. He served in France until he was wounded in action on 2 August 1917 during the Battle of Passchendaele (Third Battle of Ypres), and was sent back to England for treatment.
He never returned to active service in France, and remained with the 3rd and 12th Battalions, the East Surrey Regiment, in Britain until he was demobilised in early 1919. Sherriff’s ‘Officer’s Record of Service’ shows that he retained the rank of Second Lieutenant throughout his active service in France. Later, while on home service, he was promoted firstly to Lieutenant on 5 March 1918, and later to Captain on 8 January 1919. In 1919 Sherriff unsuccessfully applied for a permanent commission in the army, and he returned to working for his pre-war employers in insurance. He devoted his free time to sport, creative writing and amateur dramatics.
He wrote at least six plays on an amateur basis, often as a means to raise funds for local causes and organisations: A Hitch in the Proceedings (1921); The Woods of Meadowside (1922}; Profit & Loss (1923); Cornlow in the Downs (1923); The Feudal System (1925); and
Mr Birdie’s Finger (1926). Sherriff also acted in several of these early plays, as did his sister Beryl Sherriff. Sadly we do not have copies of these early plays in the SPAL collection.
Then, in 1928 Sherriff wrote Journey’s End, his most spectacular dramatic success, which was performed for just two nights at the Apollo Theatre in London. The play was set in the trenches in March 1918, and was based on his own experiences and comrades at the Western Front. It was well received, and the play transferred to the Savoy Theatre in January 1929. It soon proved to be a critical and commercial success. None of his later plays achieved the success of Journey’s End.
In the 1930’s Sherriff also began his career as a screenplay writer and wrote and co-wrote various film scripts, including The Invisible Man (1933), One More River (1934) and The Road Back (1937). His biggest success came in 1939 when he was nominated, along with Eric Maschwitz and Claudine West, for an Academy Award for writing the adapted screenplay for Goodbye, Mr Chips. This career continued in the 1940’s with That Hamilton Woman (1941), This Above All (1942) and the Academy Award winning Mrs Miniver (1942), for which he was an uncredited writer. In 1956 Sherriff was nominated for BAFTA Best British Screenplay Awards for The Dam Busters and also The Night My Number Came Up, both of which had been released in 1955.
In 1944 Sherriff resumed play writing. Many of these later plays were performed in the West End. We have a number of these plays (in sets) in the SPAL collection: Miss Mabel (1949); Home at Seven (1950); Long Sunset (1955); Telescope (1959); Shred of Evidence (1961); and White Carnation (1954). It would be an interesting project for a play-reading group to read all these plays! He also wrote a number of novels, and a memoir No Leading Lady (1968), which is available (for reference only) in the SPAL collection.
Sherriff never married, and remained devoted to his mother, with whom he lived, latterly at his Esher house ‘Rosebriars’. He died in Kingston Hospital on 13 September 1975.
Sherriff bequeathed his papers to the Governors of Kingston Grammar School, while his royalties were divided between the School and the Scouts Association. He also bequeathed his home to Elmbridge Borough Council as an arts venue. It was later sold, and the capital realized on its sale established the RC Sherriff Trust (formerly the Rosebriars Trust), which supports the arts within Elmbridge Borough.
There are three collections of Sherriff’s papers held at the Surrey History Centre, all of which are now fully catalogued and accessible thanks to the Heritage Lottery Fund, and support from Surrey History Trust, Kingston Grammar School, The RC Sherriff Trust, and Curtis Brown Literary Agents.
See below for items by RC Sherriff in the SPAL collection available for hire:
Composer: Ethel Smyth (1858 - 1944)
“One of the most remarkable people of our time”
“She was one of the most remarkable people of our time, among men or women, and there are many of us alive today who cherish her memory, and we do so with admiration, respect and a great deal of love.” This was how Sir Thomas Beecham concluded his tribute to Dame Ethel in a broadcast on the BBC Home Service in April 1958 to mark her centenary.
Ethel Smyth was the fourth of eight children – six girls and two boys - born to Major General John Hall Smyth of the Royal Artillery and his wife Emma nee Struth. Her childhood was spent in Sidcup, near Woolwich where her father commanded the Artillery Depot having recently returned from India, and then Frimley near Farnborough from 1867 when her father, promoted to General, took command of the Artillery at Aldershot. It was at this time that Ethel discovered her aptitude for music and started composing – she says mainly psalm chants and hymns – and playing the piano and singing with her sister Mary. Their duets became a feature of home dinner parties. Her mother, who was musical, albeit untrained, encouraged her. When a new governess who had studied at Leipzig Conservatorium arrived and introduced her to classical music, Ethel aged 12 became determined that she would go to Leipzig to study there.
Harmony lessons with an army officer colleague of her father who also happened to be a composer introduced her to Wagner and she conceived a desire to have an opera produced in Germany before she was forty. Her father wanted her to ‘be presented’ and to marry but Edith was determined to study to be a composer.
Edith had begun to slip away to London on her own to attend concerts – she borrowed money from local tradesmen and told them to put the sum on the General’s account. This provoked a confrontation with her father and she said that she would have to go to London to hear music if she was not allowed to go to Leipzig. She embarked on a campaign of disobedience, refusing to go to church, refusing to sing at dinner parties and refusing to talk to anyone and her father finally relented. A family friend who recognised Ethel’s talent and wanted to encourage her produced a respectable aunt who would look after her and Ethel departed for Leipzig in July 1877.
Finding the teaching at the Conservatorium unsatisfactory Ethel started to take private lessons with Heinrich von Herzogenberg whose wife Elisabeth (known as Frau Lisl) was a former pupil and close musical confidant of Brahms. Through the von Herzogenbergs Ethel gained access to the highest levels of music society in Germany and was able to observe Brahms himself from close quarters.
The story of Ethel’s childhood and teenage years illustrates three characteristics that proved to be typical of her whole life: her defiance of convention in refusing to marry and choosing to be a composer, her ambition, moreover, to compose operas, the most expensive form she could have chosen rather than the piano pieces and songs that were the typical output of most female composers at the time, and her iron determination to have her own way.
Some miscellaneous Ethel Smyth facts
Further reading/listening
Copies of many of Ethel’s books are available for reference at the Surrey History Centre which also holds manuscript and printed copies of March of the Women. Alternatively, Ronald Crichton’s abridged selection from her writings with his informative introduction and a comprehensive list of compositions complied by Jory Bennett may be found online at the Internet Archive.
Spotify has many recordings of Ethel’s music. There is also a recording of the 1958 BBC programme, broadcast to mark her centenary, which begins with Sir Thomas Beecham’s extempore tribute and concludes with a number of anecdotes recalled by people who knew her well, including her niece.
There are also many recordings available on YouTube including a remarkable one of a radio broadcast, probably dating from 1935, in which Dame Ethel gives her not wholly complimentary recollections of Johannes Brahms.
The website www.ethelsmyth.org is dedicated to celebrating the life and achievements of Dame Ethel.
The SPAL collection holds a number of items relating to Ethel Smyth including scores, recordings of her music, and 3 books about her. Notable compositions include ‘The Wreckers’ and a Mass in D major. Smyth was heavily involved with the women’s suffrage movement (causing her to serve 2 months in Holloway prison). In 1911 she wrote ‘The March of the Women’, dedicated to Emmeline Pankhurst, which became the anthem of the Women’s Social and Political Union.
For a list of all Smyth resources in the SPAL collection for hire please see the table below and to read the extended article written by Roger Miller please download the PDF file below.
“One of the most remarkable people of our time”
“She was one of the most remarkable people of our time, among men or women, and there are many of us alive today who cherish her memory, and we do so with admiration, respect and a great deal of love.” This was how Sir Thomas Beecham concluded his tribute to Dame Ethel in a broadcast on the BBC Home Service in April 1958 to mark her centenary.
Ethel Smyth was the fourth of eight children – six girls and two boys - born to Major General John Hall Smyth of the Royal Artillery and his wife Emma nee Struth. Her childhood was spent in Sidcup, near Woolwich where her father commanded the Artillery Depot having recently returned from India, and then Frimley near Farnborough from 1867 when her father, promoted to General, took command of the Artillery at Aldershot. It was at this time that Ethel discovered her aptitude for music and started composing – she says mainly psalm chants and hymns – and playing the piano and singing with her sister Mary. Their duets became a feature of home dinner parties. Her mother, who was musical, albeit untrained, encouraged her. When a new governess who had studied at Leipzig Conservatorium arrived and introduced her to classical music, Ethel aged 12 became determined that she would go to Leipzig to study there.
Harmony lessons with an army officer colleague of her father who also happened to be a composer introduced her to Wagner and she conceived a desire to have an opera produced in Germany before she was forty. Her father wanted her to ‘be presented’ and to marry but Edith was determined to study to be a composer.
Edith had begun to slip away to London on her own to attend concerts – she borrowed money from local tradesmen and told them to put the sum on the General’s account. This provoked a confrontation with her father and she said that she would have to go to London to hear music if she was not allowed to go to Leipzig. She embarked on a campaign of disobedience, refusing to go to church, refusing to sing at dinner parties and refusing to talk to anyone and her father finally relented. A family friend who recognised Ethel’s talent and wanted to encourage her produced a respectable aunt who would look after her and Ethel departed for Leipzig in July 1877.
Finding the teaching at the Conservatorium unsatisfactory Ethel started to take private lessons with Heinrich von Herzogenberg whose wife Elisabeth (known as Frau Lisl) was a former pupil and close musical confidant of Brahms. Through the von Herzogenbergs Ethel gained access to the highest levels of music society in Germany and was able to observe Brahms himself from close quarters.
The story of Ethel’s childhood and teenage years illustrates three characteristics that proved to be typical of her whole life: her defiance of convention in refusing to marry and choosing to be a composer, her ambition, moreover, to compose operas, the most expensive form she could have chosen rather than the piano pieces and songs that were the typical output of most female composers at the time, and her iron determination to have her own way.
Some miscellaneous Ethel Smyth facts
- Dame Ethel lived in Woking at a cottage she named ‘Coign’ near Woking Golf Course in Hook Heath from 1910 until her death. The cottage, now renamed, bears a blue plaque.
- Dame Ethel owned a succession of four Old English Sheepdogs, all called Pan. She wrote movingly about the illness and death of Pan IV, the one she had loved the most, who was clearly a very good dog indeed.
- Dame Ethel, in common with many men and women of her time whose politics were radical, was a keen cyclist. In his memoirs Sir Henry Wood recalled his first meeting with her. Sir Henry, also a cyclist, needed his bicycle to be repaired and was told by his maid that a man was waiting to see him in the drawing room. Walking into the room and assuming that the figure apparently wearing breeches with its back to him was the man who had come about the repair, he began to talk about his bicycle. The figure turned round and said: “Bicycle? I am Ethel Smyth!” The breeches were in fact the bloomers of Ethel’s ‘Rational Dress’, a fashion adopted by more daring women for cycling.
- Ethel worked as an assistant radiologist in a French military hospital in Vichy from 1915 to 1918.
- Dame Ethel’s penultimate composition in 1930 was a fanfare called ‘Hot Potatoes’ written in aid of the Musicians’ Benevolent Fund and performed by Army Bandsmen from Kneller Hall.
- Dame Ethel’s March of the Women was performed in 1930 at the unveiling of a statue of Emmeline Pankhurst in a version accompanied by the band of the suffragette’s main adversaries, the Metropolitan Police.
- Dame Ethel received the honorary degree of D. Mus from Durham University in 1901. Not many years previously the university’s position was that women were not eligible for degrees but might go through the exams and receive a certificate if they were successful. She claimed that she was made a Dame in 1922 after having come to the notice of Lord Riddell, a friend of Lloyd George, through her involvement in a dispute at Woking Golf Club between the male and female members about a short cut through the club house that involved the ladies passing the men’s dressing rooms. She received further honorary degrees from Oxford in 1926 (the first female recipient of an honorary doctorate in music from the university), St Andrews (1928) and Manchester (1930).
Further reading/listening
Copies of many of Ethel’s books are available for reference at the Surrey History Centre which also holds manuscript and printed copies of March of the Women. Alternatively, Ronald Crichton’s abridged selection from her writings with his informative introduction and a comprehensive list of compositions complied by Jory Bennett may be found online at the Internet Archive.
Spotify has many recordings of Ethel’s music. There is also a recording of the 1958 BBC programme, broadcast to mark her centenary, which begins with Sir Thomas Beecham’s extempore tribute and concludes with a number of anecdotes recalled by people who knew her well, including her niece.
There are also many recordings available on YouTube including a remarkable one of a radio broadcast, probably dating from 1935, in which Dame Ethel gives her not wholly complimentary recollections of Johannes Brahms.
The website www.ethelsmyth.org is dedicated to celebrating the life and achievements of Dame Ethel.
The SPAL collection holds a number of items relating to Ethel Smyth including scores, recordings of her music, and 3 books about her. Notable compositions include ‘The Wreckers’ and a Mass in D major. Smyth was heavily involved with the women’s suffrage movement (causing her to serve 2 months in Holloway prison). In 1911 she wrote ‘The March of the Women’, dedicated to Emmeline Pankhurst, which became the anthem of the Women’s Social and Political Union.
For a list of all Smyth resources in the SPAL collection for hire please see the table below and to read the extended article written by Roger Miller please download the PDF file below.
| ethel_smyth_full_article_written_by_roger_miller_may_2020.pdf |
Composer: Herbert Howells (1892-1983)
The composer Herbert Howells was born, like Ralph Vaughan Williams, in Gloucestershire, where he was greatly influenced by the beautiful countryside of the region. Unlike Vaughan Williams, who was born into a distinguished family of wealth and privilege, and who spent his childhood in the grandeur of Leith Hill Place high in the Surrey hills, Howells was born into a poor family, the youngest of eight children. As a young man, he also had to suffer the indignity of his father going bankrupt, an event which brought shame on a family in a small provincial town.
His most formative musical experience was hearing the first performance of Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a theme of Thomas Tallis in Gloucester cathedral in 1910. He was deeply affected by the music and it was also there that he met Vaughan Williams for the first time. Later they would form a close and long-lasting friendship.
Unlike Vaughan Williams, who took years to find his own style, Howells matured early. He was a brilliant student at the Royal College of Music and he already had an assured technique by the time he was twenty. Like Vaughan Williams, he was influenced by Tudor polyphony, by folksong (largely, he said, for its use of the ancient modes), and by the beauties of the English countryside. He was always primarily a contrapuntal composer, weaving together his separate melodic lines with apparent ease.
Howells made his living as a teacher – mainly at the RCM, though he was also appointed as professor of music at London University - and he was therefore under no financial necessity to compose. He wrote music simply because he wanted to and he showed very little interest in promoting his own music.
Howells was brought up in the English cathedral tradition, beginning his career as an articled pupil to Herbert Brewer, the organist of Gloucester cathedral. He passed the difficult FRCO exam and was for a brief period assistant organist at Salisbury, where he lived in the delightful surroundings of the Cathedral Close. He was always inspired by the architecture of the great cathedrals and relished the sound of choral voices echoing in the great spaces. He was not a religious man but he turned to writing church music later in life and composed many fine pieces for the services of the Anglican church.
Howells was diagnosed with Graves’ disease at the age of 23 and given six months to live. He received a new experimental treatment, involving injections of radium for two years, and then went on to live until the ripe old age of ninety. His illness prevented him from being called up for service in the first world war and so he escaped the slaughter that was the cruel fate of so many of his contemporaries.
He suffered one great tragedy in his life – the death of his son Michael from spinal meningitis at the age of nine. Howells always felt a deep sense of loss. He said that there was never a day in the rest of his life when he did not think of Michael, and that the memory of Michael is present in much of his music. To assuage his grief, he wrote the work that is generally considered his masterpiece: the Hymnus Paradisi, a kind of requiem for Michael. Howells regarded it as a private piece and it lay unperformed for many years until Vaughan Williams urged Howells to have it performed. It is an intense and powerful work, for choir and large orchestra, displaying a wide range of emotions from deep sorrow and anger at loss, to acceptance, resignation and mourning.
Howells was closely involved with Vaughan Williams’ Leith Hill Musical Festival, based in Dorking. He served on the music committee for over forty years, adjudicated several times in the 1930s and 40s, and also presented the prizes to the winning choirs on three occasions. His music has often featured in the competitions and in the programmes of the festival concerts.
Howells wrote orchestral music (including two piano concertos), chamber music (notably the string quartet entitled In Gloucestershire), and a large amount of keyboard music (for organ, piano and clavichord). He also of course wrote a good deal of choral music; major works are the Hymnus Paradisi, the Missa sabrinensis, and the Motet on the death of President Kennedy. The library holds a wide selection of his choral works, several of his instrumental pieces, various CD recordings, and also some books on Howells and his music.
Written by Ian Codd
The composer Herbert Howells was born, like Ralph Vaughan Williams, in Gloucestershire, where he was greatly influenced by the beautiful countryside of the region. Unlike Vaughan Williams, who was born into a distinguished family of wealth and privilege, and who spent his childhood in the grandeur of Leith Hill Place high in the Surrey hills, Howells was born into a poor family, the youngest of eight children. As a young man, he also had to suffer the indignity of his father going bankrupt, an event which brought shame on a family in a small provincial town.
His most formative musical experience was hearing the first performance of Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a theme of Thomas Tallis in Gloucester cathedral in 1910. He was deeply affected by the music and it was also there that he met Vaughan Williams for the first time. Later they would form a close and long-lasting friendship.
Unlike Vaughan Williams, who took years to find his own style, Howells matured early. He was a brilliant student at the Royal College of Music and he already had an assured technique by the time he was twenty. Like Vaughan Williams, he was influenced by Tudor polyphony, by folksong (largely, he said, for its use of the ancient modes), and by the beauties of the English countryside. He was always primarily a contrapuntal composer, weaving together his separate melodic lines with apparent ease.
Howells made his living as a teacher – mainly at the RCM, though he was also appointed as professor of music at London University - and he was therefore under no financial necessity to compose. He wrote music simply because he wanted to and he showed very little interest in promoting his own music.
Howells was brought up in the English cathedral tradition, beginning his career as an articled pupil to Herbert Brewer, the organist of Gloucester cathedral. He passed the difficult FRCO exam and was for a brief period assistant organist at Salisbury, where he lived in the delightful surroundings of the Cathedral Close. He was always inspired by the architecture of the great cathedrals and relished the sound of choral voices echoing in the great spaces. He was not a religious man but he turned to writing church music later in life and composed many fine pieces for the services of the Anglican church.
Howells was diagnosed with Graves’ disease at the age of 23 and given six months to live. He received a new experimental treatment, involving injections of radium for two years, and then went on to live until the ripe old age of ninety. His illness prevented him from being called up for service in the first world war and so he escaped the slaughter that was the cruel fate of so many of his contemporaries.
He suffered one great tragedy in his life – the death of his son Michael from spinal meningitis at the age of nine. Howells always felt a deep sense of loss. He said that there was never a day in the rest of his life when he did not think of Michael, and that the memory of Michael is present in much of his music. To assuage his grief, he wrote the work that is generally considered his masterpiece: the Hymnus Paradisi, a kind of requiem for Michael. Howells regarded it as a private piece and it lay unperformed for many years until Vaughan Williams urged Howells to have it performed. It is an intense and powerful work, for choir and large orchestra, displaying a wide range of emotions from deep sorrow and anger at loss, to acceptance, resignation and mourning.
Howells was closely involved with Vaughan Williams’ Leith Hill Musical Festival, based in Dorking. He served on the music committee for over forty years, adjudicated several times in the 1930s and 40s, and also presented the prizes to the winning choirs on three occasions. His music has often featured in the competitions and in the programmes of the festival concerts.
Howells wrote orchestral music (including two piano concertos), chamber music (notably the string quartet entitled In Gloucestershire), and a large amount of keyboard music (for organ, piano and clavichord). He also of course wrote a good deal of choral music; major works are the Hymnus Paradisi, the Missa sabrinensis, and the Motet on the death of President Kennedy. The library holds a wide selection of his choral works, several of his instrumental pieces, various CD recordings, and also some books on Howells and his music.
Written by Ian Codd
