The Hopkins Manuscript

About the Author

R. C. Sherriff was born in 1896 and worked as an insurance clerk after leaving school. He joined the army shortly after the outbreak of the First World War, and from 1917 served as a captain in the East Surrey regiment. He saw action at the battles of Vimy and Loos and was severely wounded at Ypres. After the war, he returned to his desk job and spent ten years as a claims adjuster. It was an interest in amateur theatricals which led him to try his hand at writing. His most famous play, Journey’s End, was based on his letters home from the trenches and was initially rejected by many theatre managements. In December 1928, it was given a single performance by the Incorporated Stage Society, with a young Laurence Olivier in the lead role. The play’s enormous subsequent success enabled Sherriff to become a full-time writer. In his mid-thirties he fulfilled a long-held dream and went to Oxford to study history, but gave up his degree when he was invited to write scripts for Hollywood. His screenplays include The Invisible Man (1933), Goodbye, Mr Chips (1933) and The Dam Busters (1955), while his best novels include The Fortnight in September (1931) and The Hopkins Manuscript (1939). He spent most of his life living quietly with his mother in Esher in Surrey; his autobiography, No Leading Lady, appeared in 1968. Sherriff died in 1975.