Forty Years On (play)

The scenes are linked by an ongoing conversation involving a Member of Parliament and his family that takes place during World War II, reflecting on what has passed.

This is followed by an evocation of the Edwardian era, seen through people's too-rosy memories, including growing up and going to school at the time.

There is a parody of the adventure novels of John Buchan, "Sapper" and their kind, described as "the school of Snobbery with Violence".

The first production of Forty Years On opened at the Apollo Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue on 31 October 1968, directed by Patrick Garland and was an immediate success.

Philip Hope-Wallace in The Guardian described the play as "A wry, irreverent and often wildly hilarious kind of Cavalcade in reverse.

"[4] Irving Wardle in the New York Times: "We have been waiting for a full-scale mock-heroic pageant of modern myth, and Mr. Bennett has now supplied it... On his own lips the writing sometimes congeals into compulsive punning and wonderland nonsense logic.