An Inspector Calls On Moscow [Drama]

2025 sees the 80th anniversary of the first production of J B Priestley's most popular play, An Inspector Calls. He wrote it at the height of his fame, during the last months of World War Two, as a call for post-war social change, and to help encourage a Labour victory in the 1945 General Election.

Considered a ‘dangerous leftie' by the Conservative government, Priestley was thwarted in his efforts to premiere the play in Churchill's Britain. Undaunted, he turned his attention to Stalin's Russia.

It was not the first time Priestley had caused political discomfort. His outspoken views on the war were expressed via his popular Postscripts BBC radio broadcasts between 1940 and 1941, until prime minister Winston Churchill made it clear to Broadcasting House that 'Mr Priestley's war aims are not my war aims'. Priestley was duly removed from the airwaves.

An Inspector Calls on Moscow explores the events leading up to the writing, and eventual staging in the USSR, of An Inspector Calls – where it received standing ovations and enthusiastic reviews.

Written by Mark Burgess

J B Priestley - Rory Kinnear

Jane Priestley - Karen Ascoe

Archie Clark Kerr...Nigel Anthony

Harriman - .Paul Hilton

Ogilvie - Richard Attlee

Hertford - Trevor Littledale

Daphne - Samantha Hughes

Translator - Inna Metlina

Pilot - Olegs Ohotins

Producer/Director: David Blount

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4

It's 1945, and JB Priestley (Rory Kinnear) gets his new play staged in Soviet Russia.

It's 1945, and left-leaning author JB Priestley, struggling to be heard in Churchill's Britain, gets his new play premiered in Stalin's Russia. Rory Kinnear stars as Priestley.

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