Uploaded April 2021 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
heres a very rare 78 rpm shelllac record played on my modern Numark TTX record deck of a snippet of An Englishman's Home a threat-of-invasion play by Guy du Maurier, first produced in 1909. The title is a reference to the expression "an Englishman's home is his castle".
An Englishman's Home caused a sensation in London when it appeared anonymously, under the name "A Patriot", in 1909.[1] The writer Guy du Maurier was a regular officer in the British Army, who had seen active service during the South African War and who was to be killed in France in 1915.[2]
It first played at Wyndham's Theatre on 27 January[3] and went on to be a long-running success. It is now considered a typical example of the invasion literature popular at the time.[4] The play was produced by Guy's brother Gerald du Maurier, possibly without his knowledge and with some assistance from J. M. Barrie.[5] The story concerns an attack on England by a foreign power identified as "Nearland", generally assumed to represent Germany. The home of an ordinary middle-class family is besieged by Nearlander soldiers, and the play climaxes with the father shooting an enemy officer and subsequently being executed.[1] In Guy du Maurier's original version the invaders triumph but J. M. Barrie and Gerald du Maurier revised the ending to provide a last-minute British victory.[6]
The play stressed Britain's unpreparedness for attack, and has been credited with boosting recruitment to the Territorial Force in the years immediately before World War I.[1][3] The play was revived on stage in May 1939 at London's Prince's Theatre.[7] It influenced niece Daphne du Maurier's 1952 novelette The Birds,[8] which was made into a movie directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
Film Edit
heres a very rare 78 rpm shelllac record played on my modern Numark TTX record deck of a snippet of An Englishman's Home a threat-of-invasion play by Guy du Maurier, first produced in 1909. The title is a reference to the expression "an Englishman's home is his castle".
An Englishman's Home caused a sensation in London when it appeared anonymously, under the name "A Patriot", in 1909.[1] The writer Guy du Maurier was a regular officer in the British Army, who had seen active service during the South African War and who was to be killed in France in 1915.[2]
It first played at Wyndham's Theatre on 27 January[3] and went on to be a long-running success. It is now considered a typical example of the invasion literature popular at the time.[4] The play was produced by Guy's brother Gerald du Maurier, possibly without his knowledge and with some assistance from J. M. Barrie.[5] The story concerns an attack on England by a foreign power identified as "Nearland", generally assumed to represent Germany. The home of an ordinary middle-class family is besieged by Nearlander soldiers, and the play climaxes with the father shooting an enemy officer and subsequently being executed.[1] In Guy du Maurier's original version the invaders triumph but J. M. Barrie and Gerald du Maurier revised the ending to provide a last-minute British victory.[6]
The play stressed Britain's unpreparedness for attack, and has been credited with boosting recruitment to the Territorial Force in the years immediately before World War I.[1][3] The play was revived on stage in May 1939 at London's Prince's Theatre.[7] It influenced niece Daphne du Maurier's 1952 novelette The Birds,[8] which was made into a movie directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
Film Edit
