Few theater historians now believe that the period between 1945 and 1955 was the cultural wasteland described by such critics as Kenneth Tynan, John Russell Taylor, and others. Many British playwrights, while not necessarily undiscovered gems, nevertheless deserve rescue from the obscurity into which the "New Wave" of the 1950s in British theater pushed them. One such playwright, whose use of gentle irony and subtle suggestion left him unable to survive the blast of polemical drama, was Wynyard Browne. Though his theatrical career was comparatively brief and slender--consisting of only five produced plays--Browne's mix of the heretical and the emotional demands a fresh examination and appreciation.

Wynyard Barry Browne was born in London on 6 October 1911, the son of Eleanor Muriel Verena Malcolmson Browne and the Reverend Barry Mathew Charles Sleater Browne. He was educated at Marlborough and Christ's College, Cambridge; while at the university he met Frith Banbury, who, as...