A BBC Radio 4 drama of mesmerising delicacy from Julia Blackburn, winner of the Pen Ackerley prize for memoir 2009, and daughter of poet Thomas Blackburn. But once you get past this (and remember it was written in the twenties), it's a play full of drama and a study of the British "stiff upper lip".

Following rejection by many theatre managements, "Journey's End" was given a single performance by the Incorporated Stage Society, in which Lawrence Olivier took the lead role. But I love the theatre and I’ve wanted to read Journey’s End for a while now because I’ve heard it was beautiful and tragic. it's very short, but i was still able to grow fond of some of the charachters (specially Osborne's). The piece quickly became internationally popular, with numerous productions and tours in English and other languages.

It is a play depicting humanity with the help of the unreal edges of the brutality of war colliding with memories, self and a sense of home. I loved the exploration of the disconnect between the idyllic boarding-school days before the war (talk of rugby, holidays, and schoolboy idols) and the grim reality the characters face. Stanhope, massively brutalized by the war, manages to convince Hibbert to stay, even at the point of threatening to kill him. The play follows a group of British soldiers in their six day stint in the trenches before the coming German offensive, but it is clear from the outset that it isn’t the Germans who are the real enemy.

This is something for those interested in the links between society, communities, workplaces and transport.It held close to the original script although there were changes, the most obvious being the depiction on camera of the raid, which happens off-stage in the theatre production.

There’s one scene where several characters are waiting until they must go over the dugout and into no man’s land, and each minute is excruciatingly counted down. Stanhope tells the company that a German captive told them that a major operation was going to occur in a couple days; he commands several troops, including Trotter and Second Lieutenant Hibbert, to ensure that the barbed-wire fences are appropriately mended. Sherriff wrote the play based on his own experiences, and appears to have no particular axe to grind - neither anti-war, nor patriotic - with its primary focus on the toll placed on the young officers and the working class soldiers thrown into such a horrific situation. In August 2018 a production was staged to commemorate the end of the First World War at St John's School, Leatherhead, and the Leatherhead Theatre, directed by Graham Pountney.I prepared myself from Raleigh's introduction in Act One, yes, but I really let myself feel for him and sympathise with him. Osborne reads aloud to Trotter from Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland; another attempt to escape from the realities of the war. i wasn't expecting journey's end to be like this (after all, i'm reading it for school and tbh, most teachers couldn't pick a good book for summer reading if their lives depended on it). It reminds me of Pat Barker's Regeneration (1991), which similarly resists condemning men for deciding to fight and likely die.