J. B. Priestley

'We don't live alone ... We are responsible for each other'A policeman interrupts a rich family's dinner to question them about the suicide of a young working-class girl. As their guilty secrets are gradually revealed over the course of the evening, 'An Inspector Calls', J. B. Priestley's most famous play, shows us the terrible consequences of poverty and inequality. The other powerful plays in this collection - 'Time and the Conways', 'I Have Been Here Before' and 'The Linden Tree' - explore time, fate, free will and the effects of war. 'A vastly talented and exceptionally versatile and wise writer' Iris Murdoch'Priestley was volcanic, fertile ... and never dull' Anthony BurgessIf you enjoyed An Inspector Calls, you might like Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.

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Just before dawn the play's characters - who represent every stratum of society - come to the wall overlooking a strange city whose gate is shut against them. At daybreak they are admitted and towards the end of the day some have found it to be the ideal earth has never achieved. So that everyone may know of this attainable perfection two of them make the sacrifice of leaving the city to return to their sinful world. Contained in the volume Priestley Plays II.-5 women, 4 men

William Hazlitt was a brilliant and perceptive essayist and critic in the early 19th Century whose critical impressions of his contemporaries and their work gave a sense of an age and the leading figures who populated it in a particularly vivid way.

4m, 6f / Scenery: Interior The Conways are having a party to celebrate Kay's twenty first birthday. Kay hopes to be a novelist. Hazel, the beauty, anticipates a romantic marriage. Madge wants to reform the world and marry the dashing young family lawyer. Carol, the baby of the family, spreads good cheer while Robin, back from war, is certain to have a good career. Alan is content to be an armchair philosopher. The nitwit mother has high hopes for them all. At the party Kay, with frightening clarity, sees her family twenty years in the future. They are petty, mean, and unfulfilled. Only Kay and her calm brother realize time is relative and there is something fine and worthwhile beyond.

A snowstorm traps a group of guests and crew into the Greenfingers Palace Hotel. A detective is sent to the hotel to investigate a top secret crime, but it is Miss Tracey and new hostess who solve everything.-6 women, 4 men