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. Reincarnation and cyclic time all have been used as explanations for this phenomenon which modern science sees as an anomaly of memory.

Apparently, he seems to know that the industrialist Ormund and his wife Janet are due to arrive there - and also about the drama to be played out between them and Oliver Farrant, a schoolmaster teaching at one of the Ormund schools. His favourite among his books was for many years the novel Bright Day, though he later said he had come to prefer The Image Men. The idea is slowly revealed and elaborated in great detail among six characters over the course of three days at a country inn. It should not be overlooked that Priestley was an outstanding essayist, and many of his short pieces best capture his passions and his great talent and his mastery of the English language. This ending is Candide-like; Burmanley has little in common with a garden (most of the other characters find it drab, dismal, even “hateful”), but for him there’s something to be cultivated there.The main story is an enjoyable one to read and teach though and I think particularly with the incredibly switched on class I had added to the enjoyment of it. A lively account of his life at this period may be found in his volume of reminiscences, Margin Released . It has a powerful political message which we will all learn in “fire, blood and anguish” if we don’t listen. I Have Been Here Before' seamlessly incorporates a playfully serious hypothesis about the nature of Time into the action.

For this reason, reading the plays in succession, it felt repetitive to me - maybe it's different on stage, however.It is the record of man as a spiritual creature, with a whole world of unknown continents and strange seas, gardens of Paradise and cities lit with hell-fire, within the depths of his own soul. It's about changing our fate, and the hope that comes with changes that we consciously make to end cycles, both ones we are currently stuck in and ones we are stuck in throughout time. 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. While holding its audience with the gripping tension of a detective thriller, it is also a philosophical play about social conscience and the crumbling of middle class values.