The Long and the Short and the Tall [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION Willis Hall was born in Leeds in 1929 and grew up there with an intimate knowledge of North-country working-class life. At an early age he wrote articles for local newspapers, and later in Singapore, where he was on mihtary service, he regularly wrote children's radio plays and other scripts for Radio Malaya. On returning to England ini953 he first worked as ajourna-hst and then became a full-time writer for BBC radio and television. His first play for the live theatre was The Royal Astrologer (1957), a children's play; this was followed by Poet and Pheasant, a North-country comedy. Then came The Long and the Short and the Tall. When it was produced at the Edinburgh Festival (under the title The Disciplines of War) in 1958, Kenneth Tynan welcomed it as 'the most moving production of the Festival'. It was afterwards presented at the Royal Court Theatre in London, where it was a great commercial and artistic success, and later transferred to the New Theatre. Since i960 WiUis Hall has become very widely known in collaboration with Keith Waterhouse. Their first joint success was the stage play oi Billy Liar, based on Keith Waterhouse's novel; this ran in the West End for eighteen months. Their work is very often seen on television and they wrote the scripts of some famous films, including Whistle Down the Wind, A Kind of Loving and Billy Liar. Their plays for the theatre include: Celebration, All Things Bright and Beautiful and the double bill. Squat Betty and The Sponge Room. In such a collaboration it is difficult to know which partner contributes what to the finished work, but even before it began WiUis vii