The Sons of Catholic Gentlemen

by Francis Beckett

This was one of the two winning plays in the London Radio Playwrights' Festival last year. The Sons of Catholic Gentlemen is set in 1957 in a fictional Jesuit public school in England, and stars Anthony Booth, Frances Tomelty and Peter Guinness. It was directed and produced by IRDP's Tim Crook, and was recorded digitally on location, multi-tracked on computers and mastered in Dolby ProLogic Surround Sound. The play was originally broadcast on LBC on 12th October 1997 and it was our first Internet Play of the Month in December1997.

You can find out about our current Play of the Month by clicking here.

The Play:

According to Francis Beckett, the school in the play bears much similarity to Beaumont College in Berkshire, where, he says, "I spent four years having snobbery and religious bigotry beaten into me". He believes that the changes being made within the public school system are merely cosmetic. "A great deal clearly has changed", he says. "The daily atmosphere of fear has gone, and boys are no longer beaten into learning the faith by rote. But a level of snobbery is a key component in the public school system, and will be with us as long as schools charge fees."

John Izbicki, writing in the Independent, said "our independent schools are used to the cut and thrust of their critics and The Sons of Catholic Gentlemen certainly produced more than a few unkindly lacerations".

You can also read in more detail what the newspapers said about this play.

The Cast:

The Priest: Anthony Booth

Father Bramble: Peter Guinness

Peter's mother: Frances Tomelty

Young Peter Jackson: Liam Shannon

Peter Jackson as an adult and Peter's father: Philip Brook

The Rector: Neil McLeod

Burgoyne: Adrian Ross-Magenty

Kelly: Adam Goodwin

Hammond: Dylan Woods

The picture shows Tim recording one

of the outdoor scenes with Adam

Goodwin and Liam Shannon

The Playwright:

Francis Beckett is a freelance journalist, writing about education as well as politics and contemporary history. Appearing most frequently in the Guardian, he also writes for the New Statesman, the Observer, The Times Educational Supplement, History Today and other publications.

His last book, Enemy Within, about Britain's communists, was published in 1995 to critical acclaim, and his latest book, Clem Attlee, A Biography, has just been published by Robert Cohen Books (ISBN 1 86066 101 7). The Sons of Catholic Gentlemen is his first play.

Francis is a former Labour Party press officer and a former President of the National Union of Journalists.

The cover of Francis Beckett's latest book.

You can visit our page about Frances Tomelty and our page about Peter Guinness.

Page design by Marja Giejgo