Journey's End (Penguin Modern Classics)

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The play follows a group of British soldiers in their six day stint in the trenches before the coming German offensive, but it is clear from the outset that it isn’t the Germans who are the real enemy.

Here is an extract from the play which shows the Brits praising their nemesis -- the Germans -- rather than shredding them to bits. Lost from the BBC archives for over 40 years, these rediscovered episodes are presented for the very. Sometimes you have to read something funny or say something humorous to kill the boredom and drabness of war or as an escape from reality. And yet the play differs from many post-1914 works of WWI fiction, in that it is not clearly antiwar. Gore-Langton supplies enough information to satisfy the theatrical connoisseur and be of use to school-pupils mugging up on this syllabus staple.

The play is set three days before the Spring Offensive ('Operation Michael') where the Germans advanced from the Hindenburg line, on the Western Front, with the aims to break Allied lines and gain as much land as possible. I had been intending to read it since becoming aware that "I" in Withnail and I had his haircut for a part in a production of it.

In September 2018 a production was staged by Fintry Amateur Dramatic Society (FADS), in "The Studio", a converted barn outside Killearn, Stirling. Set in the trenches towards the end of the First World War, giving an insight into the British Army officers' lives leading up to Operation Michael.In 2015 the Shute Theatre and Arts Guild (STAG) staged a production of the play in St Michael's Church, Shute, Devon, directed by Elisabeth Miller.