Though Frederick Lonsdale is inextricably associated with the 1920s and 1930s, he in fact lived into the 1950s and had a career as a playwright that spanned forty-seven years. His first play, Who's Hamilton", was produced in 1903 and his last, The Way Things Go , in 1950. Lonsdale's work represents, perhaps in its purest form, the drawing-room comedy, which was a degeneration of the comedy of manners. His more famous contemporaries, W. Somerset Maugham and Noel Coward, have survived better, partly because of the eccentric twists they gave to the form, Maugham importing a genuine bitterness and cynicism and Coward adding a dash of outrageousness. Lonsdale's drawing-room comedies, on the other hand, were perfectly calculated to mildly tease but ultimately flatter their smart urban audience.

Lonsdale was born Lionel Frederick Leonard to John Henry and Susan Belford Leonard in Saint Helier, Jersey, in the Channel Islands. His father was a...