2
6
Context Booklet
An Inspector Calls
Miss Chandler, 10B/EN1
Includes information on the following:
· Page 1 -- Events between 1912-1945
· Page 2 -- J.B. Priestley
· Page 3 -- Life in the Edwardian Era
· Page 4 -- Socialism vs Capitalism
By Tavish.G
1912 – 1945
15th April 1912 – Titanic sinks (1503 dead)
28th June 1914 – Archduke Franz Ferdinand assassinated (Start of WW1)
7th May 1915 – Lusitania is sunk by a German submarine (1200 dead)
25th May 1915 – Coalition government (Liberal Democrats with Conservatives)
6th February 1918 – All propertied women over 30 given vote. 8 million women voted out of 21 million votes.
May 1918 – Spanish Flu (200,000 dead)
18th January 1919 – Paris Peace Conference (End of WW1)
23rd December 1919 – Sex Disqualification Removal Act
1920 – Women can get degrees at Oxford
July 1921 – Unemployment reaches 2.5 million
28th June 1922 – Irish Civil War
23rd January 1924 – First labour prime minister (Ramsay MacDonald)
7th May 1928 – All women over 21 get vote
28-30th September 1938 – Munich Agreement signed
1st September 1939 – Germany invades Poland (Start of WW2)
November 1942 – Beveridge Report released
J.B. Priestley
John Boynton Priestley was born in Yorkshire in 1894. He knew early on that he wanted to become a writer, but decided against going to university as he thought he would get a better feel for the world around him away from academic stresses and work. Instead, he became a junior clerk at a local wool firm at the age of 16.
When the First World War broke out, Priestley joined the infantry and escaped death several times. After the war, he gained a degree from Cambridge University, then moved to London to work as a freelance writer.
He wrote successful articles and essays, then published the first of his many novels, The Good Companions, in 1929. He wrote his first play in 1932 and went on to write 50 more. Much of his writing was ground-breaking and controversial. He included new ideas about possible parallel universes and strong political messages.
During the Second World War he broadcast a massively popular weekly radio programme which was attacked by the Conservatives as being too left-wing. The programme was eventually cancelled by the BBC for being too critical of the Government.
He continued to write into the 1970s, and died in 1984.
During the 1930's Priestley became very concerned about the consequences of social inequality in Britain, and in 1942 Priestley and others set up a new political party, the Common Wealth Party, which argued for public ownership of land, greater democracy, and a new 'morality' in politics. The party merged with the Labour Party in 1945, but Priestley was influential in developing the idea of the Welfare State which began to be put into place at the end of the war.
He believed that further world wars could only be avoided through cooperation and mutual respect between countries, and so became active in the early movement for a United Nations. And as the nucl...
