First produced at the Duchess Theatre in August 1937 Time And The Conways is one of Priestley's most accomplished and many-layered works for the stage, combining as it does an extremely accessible naturalistic style with a network of sophisticated ideas and insights which combine to make it one of his most popular plays.

Time And The Conways emerged out of Priestley's reading of J W Dunne's book An Experiment With Time in which Dunne proposed that all time is happening simultaneously ie. that past, present and future are one but that linear time is the only way in which human consciousness is able to perceive it.

Priestley uses this idea to show how human beings experience loss, failure and the death of their dreams but also how, if they could experience reality in its transcendent nature, they might find a way out. This idea, not dissimilar to that presented by mysticism and religion proposes that, if human beings could understand the transcendent nature of their existence, the need for greed and conflict would come to an end.

Whether one believes this or Dunne's theory of time the play works on the level of a universal human tragedy and it seeks to provide a powerful portrait of the history of Britain between the wars. Priestley shows how, through complacency and class arrogance, Britain allowed itself to decline and collapse between 1919 and 1937 instead of realising the immense creative and humanistic potential of the post-war generation. Priestley could clearly see the tide of history leading towards another major European conflict as he has his character Ernest comment in 1937 that they are coming to "the next war".

On the surface Time And The Conways appears to tell the story of a group of young people  whose  hopes  of  happiness are frustrated by their own mistakes or by the interference of others. At a deeper level, the play explores the question of whether happiness is possible, and whether we can change the course of our lives.

Thus Time And The Conways is all at once a political history of Britain between the wars, a universal tragedy, a family romance and a metaphysical examination of time. 

MIKE  WEAVER, Director

"The government has failed in not providing more fun." (J B Priestley, 1951)

Born in Bradford in 1894 and educated at Cambridge after surviving the First World War, Priestley never severed his northern roots and was always a robust defender of the interests of ordinary working people.

He was blessed with enormous creative energy, writing 27 novels and more than a dozen plays (including such classics as Dangerous Corner, When We Are Married, and An Inspector Calls), as well as journalism and broadcast talks.  

His social conscience became increasingly explicit during and after the 1939-45 war.  His attitude might be summed up as: the 1930s were a dark, bleak time, soiled by the 1914-18 war, marred by the Depression and nations spoiling for the next war, but what the hell is our excuse today?  Why are we again making such a mess of it?  Although consistently left of centre he never joined a political party, but did join CND with his wife Jaquetta Hawkes.  He particularly condemned the squalor the Victorian era created with its legacy of greed, selfishness, pomposity and hypocrisy, the scarred countryside and towns and the scarred lives of millions of working folk.  He also hated the austerity of post-1945 Britain and considered that governments should have injected far more happiness into peoples’ lives.

The lucidity of his prose and humanity of his judgement continues to speak to all people.  His works are timeless.