An Inspector Calls Social and Historical Context J.B. Priestley was born in 1984 in Yorkshire.

He always knew that he wanted to be a writer, but rather than going to university, he became a junior clerk at a local wool firm at the age of 16. Priestley joined the infantry when the First World War broke out, and escaped death on a number of occasions. When the war was over, he gained a degree from Cambridge University, and then moved to London to become a freelance writer. He published The Good Companions in 1929, after writing many successful articles and essays. Soon after, he wrote his first play, and then went on to write 50 more. His writing was controversial and contained many new ideas 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 World War II, the working and middle classes mixed. The evacuation of children from the cities provided them with an insight into how the more privileged classes lived, and they also mixed in the armed forced. The rationing of clothes and material meant that everybody looked the same. This gave people an idea of what a socialist Britain would be like. An Inspector Calls was written in 1945, and set in 1912, and this gave Priestley the perfect opportunity to add dramatic irony to the play, especially in the first scene, where Mr. Birling explains to everyone at the table his beliefs; how the Titanic wont sink and there wont be a war, and because the play was written in 1945, then the audience know that Mr. Birling is completely wrong. The play is more than just the story of the Birling family; it is an allegory; an allegory of how big the gap

was between classes. One piece of evidence that supports this is when the Inspector says One Eva Smith is gone, but there are millions and millions and millions of Eva Smiths and John Smiths still left with us. Eva Smith represents all the poor people of the working class, and the Birling family represents all the privileged people of the middle-class who exploit them. During this time with the values of an Edwardian era, the working class had little education and limited or no sanitation. They had no national health service, and couldnt rely on the government to help them if they were out of work. The upper classes owned most of Britain, and had the most money, and the working class paid the price for this. The rich did this by keeping prices high and wages low, meaning that they got richer and the poor got even poorer. Some writers were concerned about the situation, and some, for example, Priestley, strived for a socialist Britain were everyone worked and earned their fair share. The film is set on the very night that the unsinkable Titanic hit an iceberg and sunk; the great celebratory moment that was about to collapse. The play is an idealistic one, with the inspector representing the truly socialist Britain that the working class strived for and the upper class dismissed.