Time and the Conways

B. Priestley in 1937 illustrating J. W. Dunne's Theory of Time through the experience of a moneyed Yorkshire family, the Conways, over a period of nineteen years from 1919 to 1937.

Act One's atmosphere is one of festivity as the family celebrates the end of the War and look forward to great future of fame, prosperity and fulfilled dreams.

Robin has become a dissolute travelling salesman, estranged from his wife Joan, Madge has failed to realise her socialist dreams, Carol is dead, Hazel is married to the sadistic but wealthy Ernest.

If we can see Time as eternally present, that at any given moment we are seeing only 'a cross section of ourselves,' then we can transcend our suffering and find no need to hurt or have conflict with other people.

As the children gather at the end of the play for Mrs. Conway to foretell their future, Kay has a moment of memory of the vision of Act Two we have seen unfold.

Priestley shows how through a process of complacency and class arrogance, Britain allowed itself to decline and collapse between 1919 and 1937, instead of realizing the availability of immense creative and humanistic potential accessible during the post-war (the Great War) generation.

The idea is not dissimilar to that presented by mysticism and religion that if human beings could understand the transcendent nature of their existence the need for greed and conflict would come to an end.

[4] The cast comprised Alexander Archdale, Wilfred Babbage, Eileen Erskine, Barbara Everest, Jean Forbes-Robertson, Helen Horsey, Marie Johns, J. P. Mitchelhill, Molly Rankin and Rosemary Scott.

[7][8] In 1962 it was made into a West German film The Happy Years of the Thorwalds directed by Wolfgang Staudte and starring Elisabeth Bergner.

[12] A new BBC Radio 3 adaptation was broadcast on 14 September 2014[13] with Harriet Walter as Mrs. Conway, Anna Madeley as Kay, Rupert Evans as Alan and Michael Bertenshaw as J.