The Winslow Boy
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The Winslow Boy is an English play by Terence Rattigan based on an actual incident in the Edwardian era, which took place at the Royal Naval College, Osborne House. The play was later made into a famous film in 1948 which was directed by Anthony Asquith, starring Robert Donat as Sir Robert Morton, Cedric Hardwicke as Arthur Winslow, and Margaret Leighton as Catherine Winslow.
The film was remade in 1999, this time directed by David Mamet, starring Nigel Hawthorne and Jeremy Northam as Arthur Winslow and Sir Robert Morton KC, respectively.
Set against the strict codes of conduct and manners of the age The Winslow Boy is based on a father's fight to clear his son's name after the boy is expelled from Osborne Naval College for stealing a postal order. To clear the boy's name was imperative for the family's honour; had they not done so, they would have been shunned by their peers and society. The boy's life would have been wrecked by the stain on his character.
Ronnie Winslow, a cadet at the Royal Naval College, is accused of the theft of a postal order. An internal enquiry finds him guilty and his father, Arthur Winslow, is requested to remove his son from the college. Unwilling to accept the verdict, Winslow institutes his own enquiries and engages a friend and family solicitor, to assist him, including the briefing of a top barrister, Sir Robert Morton, should the case come to court.
The government is unwilling to allow the case to proceed, but after heated debates in the House of Commons, the government yields, and the case does come to court. Morton is able to discredit much of the supposed evidence and the government finally withdraws the charges against Ronnie.
The play was inspired by an actual event, which set a legal precedent; the case of George Archer-Shee, a cadet at Osborne in 1908, who was accused of stealing a postal order from a fellow cadet. His elder brother, Major Martin Archer-Shee, was convinced of his innocence, and persuaded his father to consult the advocate, Sir Edward Carson. Carson, after examining George for three hours, was also persuaded of his innocence, and insisted on the case coming to court.
It took two years and several enquiries before this happened, but in July 1910, the case opened. Carson was able to demolish the evidence against George. On the fourth day of the trial, the Solicitor-General rose in court to withdraw the charges against George.
The Admiralty ungraciously granted compensation to George's father, and George was commissioned in the South Staffordshire Regiment at the start of the First World War. He died of wounds at the first battle of Ypres in 1914. Major Archer-Shee was elected to Parliament in 1910. He was thirty-seven years of age, and a very different character from the failed university student, Dickie Winslow, of the play.
In the play, Rattigan quotes from actual parliamentary debates and court transcripts, but makes major changes to the characters and the timing of events. He also intoduces several fictional characters: a sister, Catherine Winslow, a suffragette and, as we learn in the final lines of the play, a potential future politician; her erstwhile fiancee, John Watherstone; and Desmond Curry, a solicitor who eventually proposes to Catherine.
Whilst the play gives only indirect reference to the court case and the parliamentary debates, the 1948 film introduces scenes from these events that are not in the play.