The Red Pen is a two-act operetta and early radio opera composed by Geoffrey Toye to a libretto by A. P. Herbert.
The piece, described by its creators as "a sort of opera" was written for the BBC, following Herbert's successful Riverside Nights, and had a running time of about 90 minutes.
[1] The performers for the second broadcast were Gladys Palmer, Vivienne Chatterton, John Buckley, Harold Kimberley, John Tanner, and Sydney Granville.
The story is set "in the near future" (the late 1920s), and opens with the whimsical premise that the "General Federation of Poets and Writers", a trade-union for authors, is agitating for the nationalisation of their industry.
In Act II, set six months later, the newly established Ministry of Verse is run in a comically bureaucratic civil service style.