(1896–1975). English playwright and screenwriter R.C. Sherriff is best known for his World War I play Journey’s End, a moving account of life in the trenches on the Western Front.
Robert Cedric Sherriff was born on June 6, 1896, in Hampton Wick, England. After attending grammar school at Kingston on Thames, Sherriff worked in his father’s insurance business until he entered the army in World War I, serving as a captain in the East Surrey Regiment. After the war he worked for several years as a claims adjuster and began to write. He drew on his war experiences in the writing of Journey’s End (1929), which met with instant success in London and ran for 595 performances, later duplicating this success throughout the world. A London revival in 1972 testified to its dramatic soundness. The rest of his plays suffered by comparison with his masterpiece, though Home at Seven (1950) is still sometimes performed.
Sherriff also wrote a number of successful film scripts, including The Invisible Man (1933), Goodbye Mr. Chips (1936), Odd Man Out (1945), and The Dam Busters (1955). His autobiography, No Leading Lady, was published in 1968. He died on Nov. 13, 1975, in London.