Wynyard Browne
Wynyard Browne was a British playwright and novelist born on October 6, 1911, in London. He was educated at Marlborough and Christ College, Cambridge, where he formed a significant relationship with Frith Banbury, who would later help promote Browne's work in London's theater scene. Browne began his literary career as a journalist and published his first novel, *Queenie Molson*, in 1934, followed by two more novels that did not achieve lasting success. It was during a period of personal struggle and the tumult of World War II that he shifted his focus to playwriting, ultimately debuting with *Dark Summer* in 1947, which addressed pressing social issues of the time, such as racial prejudice and class divisions. He continued to explore themes of family and duty in subsequent works, including *The Holly and the Ivy* and *A Question of Fact*. His later plays, *The Ring of Truth* and *A Choice of Heroes*, did not resonate with audiences as strongly as his earlier works. Browne's career was cut short when he was diagnosed with emphysema and passed away from a heart attack in 1964, but he is remembered for the nuanced and graceful quality of his plays.
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Subject Terms
Wynyard Browne
- Born: October 6, 1911
- Birthplace: London, England
- Died: February 19, 1964
- Place of death: Norwich, Norfolk, England
Biography
The son the Reverend Barry Mathew Charles Sleater Browne and his wife, Eleanor Muriel Verena Malcolmson Browne, Wynyard Browne was born on October 6, 1911 in London. Following his early education, he entered Marlborough and Christ College, Cambridge University. At Cambridge he met Frith Banbury who had a significant impact on his creative life. Banbury, a director with Binkie Beaumont’s H. M. Tennent Production Company, was instrumental in promoting Browne’s plays and in placing them in theaters in London’s West End.
Upon finishing his schooling at Cambridge, Browne turned to journalism. During this early period, he wrote a novel, Queenie Molson, which was published in 1934, when he was twenty-three. The novel received favorable reviews and was followed by Sheldon’s Way in 1935 and The Fire and the Fiddle in 1937. These novels disappointed both readers and critics.
Great international tensions pervaded Britain as the storm clouds preceding World War II gathered. Browne suffered a nervous collapse and, in 1938 retreated to Norwich to recuperate in his mother’s home. It was during this trying period and during the years of World War II that he began to consider writing plays. Not until after the war, however, did he complete his first drama, Dark Summer. The play had its initial tryout at Hammersmith’s Lyric Theater in 1947, prior to its opening on London’s West End, where Frith Banbury directed it. British audiences found this play intellectually provocative and were lavish in praising it. Dark Summer focused on matters of immediate concern to postwar Britons: racial prejudice, religious skepticism, and social dichotomies that emerged from the stratification of the social and economic classes. Joan Yeaxlee directed the play on its post-London tour of Britain. In 1948, she became Wynyard Browne’s wife.
In his next play, The Holly and the Ivy, produced in 1951, the focus is on family and duty. Jenny, the daughter of a Norfolk cleric, wants to follow her fiancé, David, who has an engineering assignment in South America for five years, but she cannot bring herself to leave her father, even though he really does not require her presence. Both this play and A Question of Fact, produced in 1957, point out the futility of not dealing honestly and openly with one’s family and friends.
Browne’s final two plays, The Ring of Truth, produced in 1960, and A Choice of Heroes, produced in 1964, were not up to his earlier standard. The former was quite trivial, although it had a rollicking quality to it. The latter, an epic drama about Russian revolutionaries in the 1880’s, was too far removed from Browne’s experience to convince audiences. Browne was diagnosed with emphysema in 1964. Shortly thereafter, on February 19, he suffered a fatal heart attack. He is remembered for the subtle inferences of his plays, which always avoided brashness and overstatement in favor of the apt and graceful gestures.