Terence Rattigan

Terence Rattigan (1911-1977), British playwright, born in London, and educated at Harrow School and the University of Oxford. After 1936, when he achieved his first London success as a playwright with French Without Tears, Rattigan had a new play produced virtually every season for 20 years. Rattigan's urbane, literate plays are deftly conceived. The Winslow Boy (1947) won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for best foreign play of the year. Other dramas include The Browning Version (1949), filmed in 1951, Separate Tables (1956), filmed in 1958, and Ross (1961). Rattigan also wrote many screenplays, among them The Yellow Rolls Royce (1964). His Collected Plays was published in 1954. He was knighted in 1971.