Love in Idleness & Less Than Kind

Michael, eighteen, returns to wartime London from schooling in Canada, brimming with youthful left-wing convictions

Reunited with his mother, he is alarmed as he begins to realise that she is the mistress of a leading member of the war cabinet

Sparks fly between the idealistic younger man and the pragmatic politician, while the mother is torn between them

Rattigan's first version of this comedy - Less Than Kind - was never staged and never published until 2011, the centenary of his birth

Instead it was substantially rewritten at the behest of the Lunts, who were to star in the premiere production, and it opened in the West End in 1944 as Love in Idleness

This volume presents both plays in full so that readers may judge for themselves which is the better

Less Than Kind was premiered in London in January 2011

This edition also includes an authoritative introduction by Dan Rebellato, a biographical sketch and chronology