[The Churchill Play] is not, in the strictest sense, a 'documentary': Brenton's vision is too personal, and perhaps too romantic, for that. Certainly, there are reconstructions…. But these glances into the past, like the more substantial projection forward into the future which gives the play its circumstantial basis, are merely elements in a metaphor which Brenton develops in order to comment on our present. The historic image is poeticised.

The metaphor rests squarely on the idea that just as certain forms of VD can develop unnoticed in the human body until the body rots to death, so the 'body politic' can contract virulent but unseen social diseases which will ultimately destroy it. Inflammation equals inflation: 'Schubert died of the pox … it makes artists see things in weird and wonderful ways. Countries are the same … inflation, inflammation. Everything's wonderful—till the backbone goes.'…

Brenton's play finds its justification...