In Praise of Love

An almost unbearably moving story of veiled emotions running deep, Terence Rattigan's In Praise of Love is based on the true life situation of Rex Harrison's wife, Kay Kendall, and her early death from cancer. Lydia is shielding her husband, Sebastian, from the knowledge that she is dying from leukaemia. But Sebastian does know and is seeking to spare her. She dies without either of them openly acknowledging their true feelings... The play was first produced as a one-act play under the title After Lydia in a double-bill with the short farce, Before Dawn, at the Duchess Theatre, London, in September 1973. Rattigan reworked and extended the play as In Praise of Love for its New York premiere at the Morosco Theatre in December 1974, starring Rex Harrison himself. This edition includes an authoritative introduction, biographical sketch and chronology. 'Few dramatists of this century have written with more understanding of the human heart than Terence Rattigan' Michael Billington