Description

George Devine (1910-1966) is best remembered today as the founder of the English Stage Company at the Royal Court Theatre in London. But when war broke out in 1939, he was a 29 year old actor and budding theatre director. A month after the start of the war, he married his partner of seven years, Sophie Harris, a member of the celebrated theatre design partnership known as Motley. A year later he was in training with the Royal Artillery. He was sent to India, and spent the final 18 months of the war participating in the Burma Campaign. Throughout the war he wrote numerous letters to Sophie, who gave birth to their daughter Harriet, was hospitalised for a period with post natal depression, and somehow continued to work throughout it all. His letters tell of his sadness at being parted from her, his dislike of the army and its regular soldiers, his thoughts on London theatre in wartime and the activities of his friends, including Laurence Olivier, Vivien Leigh, Peggy Ashcroft, John Gielgud and Alec Guinness, and his plans for the future. The letters have not previously been published.