PM's brother who wrote more plays than Shakespeare
Douglas Home was born in Edinburgh in 1912. Educated at Eton and Oxford he was the son of the 13th Earl of Home and was a younger brother to the Prime Minister, Sir Alec Douglas Home. A tank officer during the Second World War he was briefly imprisoned for refusing to obey orders. He also stood as an independent candidate for Parliament three times during the war, opposing Churchill's war aim of an unconditional surrender by the Germans.
Concentrating on his writing after the war he enjoyed little commercial success, although he did write the dialogue for the Colditz Story film, and one play, the Reluctant Debutante, has twice been adapted as a film, once in 1958 with Rex Harrison and Sandra Dee and again in 2003, when it was renamed What A Girl Wants and starred Amanda Bynes, Colin Firth and Kelly Preston.
Home himself married an equally aristocratic bride, the Honourable Rachel Brand and most of his work is set among the upper echelons of English, and Scottish, society, and characters and setting are drawn from his own circle of experience.
The photograph we have here of the playwright was taken by Reg Smith with what was then a newly acquired Rolleicord camera on two and a quarter inch film. Reg can't remember who the two girls were in the picture but thinks they worked in local banks. He also seems to recall that the play was set in a country house.
Checking through the Harvey Crane records in the South West Image Bank, archivist Stacey Dyer unearthed both Harvey's review of the piece – 'pleasant enough entertainment', 'needs a few changes' with an 'unfortunate piece of miscasting' – and the original programme of the show. The latter reveals that Anthony Roye directed and starred, as Sir Anthony Smith, 'played with his usual engaging suave charm' and that Jasmin Dee, Viola Lyel, Tom Clark, Wendy Lovelock and Leslie Glazer also appeared in the play, which took pot shots at the two main political parties. Anyone else remember it?
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