An Inspector Calls: Context

Priestley's Life

Priestley wanted to be a writer from a young age but instead of going to university he became a junior clerk at 16. When World War I broke out he joined the army and escaped death many times. After the war he got a degree at Cambridge and then became a writer. During World War II he broadcasted a popular weekly radio show that was attacked by conservatives for being too left wing. The programme was eventually cancelled by the BBC for being too critical of the government. During 1942, he and some others set up a new political party called the Common Wealth Party; It argued for public ownership of land, greater democracy, and a new morality in politics. The party merged with the Labour Party in 1945, but Priestly 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 UN. As the nuclear arms race developed in the 50s, he helped to found the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), hoping that the UK would set an example to the world by a moral act of nuclear disarmament.

Edwardian England

The play is set in 1912- two years before the first world war. It was a period of many strikes, food shortages,and great political…