rumour turned out to be untrue.” (Note 3, page 434) Involved with the West End production and being at Wyndham's (her father Sir Gerald’s old theatre) du Maurier found “was a disturbing experience.” Clive Brook as the soldier-husband was so sympathetic, while Nora Swinburne as the wife made her character unattractive, "and it seemed to her the whole balance of the play was wrecked.” Reviewing for the Evening Standard on 13 January 1945 (four months before VE Day), under the headline 'It Might Have Been So Good', the critic (and MP) Beverley Baxter wrote: "When the curtain rose again we waited for the unfolding of a tragedy or the playing out of an ironic comedy. Unhappily, Miss du Maurier had shot her bolt. Having created an admirable situation, she could do nothing to resolve it. So she decided to end the war, which was accomplished by the use of the radio and, one has to record, to the titters of some people in the audience." And he concluded: "What a pity that Miss du Maurier abandoned the play for a message! There are so many messages these days and so few plays." Film review The Stage review of the 2007 Orange Tree revival found that “the play-offers only a toff's eye of Britain at war” with a live-in servant and “a cellar full of claret, even if Spam fritters are on the menu.” This was also brought out forcefully by Richard Winnington in his devastating but still relevant film review (News Chronicle, London, 25 May. 1946). He calls Compton Bennett's film "a poor and empty adaptation of a poor and empty play" which “enshrines the worst characteristics of the British film, and condones the worst qualities of the least representative section of the British race.” Chiding the producers, Sydney Box and his sister Betty, who also wrote the screenplay, he describes it as a "novelettish distortion" of a contemporary problem. “Alas’’ he continues, “the note is one of genteel reverence. We are at war in 1940 but not an aeroplane engine is heard. A realistic plastic reproduction of the House of Commons was erected solely for the purpose of allowing Miss Valerie Hobson M.P. to make her maiden speech [strong on] cliché value. Yet Mr Churchill’s and Mr Morrison’s doubles – and the whole House – are staggered by its brilliance. This in 1941.” Finally, he notes, “The returned soldier