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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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Terence Rattigan
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(1911–77, kt 1971) Playwright known for a craftsmanlike skill combined with a considerable understanding of character, often of a rather bleak sort – as in Separate Tables (1954), a pair of one-act plays set in the dining room of a run-down residential hotel. He made his name with a light confection, French without Tears (1936), but his work has lasted best in traditional plays of conflict and suspense such as The *Winslow Boy (1946). He invented Aunt *Edna three years before *Look Back in Anger changed the English theatrical scene; but his unfashionable concern for her partly explains why his plays were underrated during the last two decades of his life.
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