GERMANY CALLING !

"He wanted fame, to be loved for his achievements, the brilliance of what he said. And instead he became famous for what he didn't didn't say."William Joyce Germany Calling! tells the story, with considerable artistic licence, of William Joyce and his wife Margaret. Anti-Semite, fascist and traitor, Joyce by the end of World War Two was hated in Britain: less for his extreme views than for the rumours, totally untrue, about what he was supposed to have said on German radio. For younger audiences today, the majority may not even remember his name, with Joyce being hanged for treason when he was technically not British at all. Why, then, publish a play, both for stage and for radio, about him at all? Simply because his story, including his relationship with his wife (including divorce and subsequent remarriage) is an interesting one, as I was convinced by meeting J. A. Cole with his (one and only) masterful biography of Joyce, whose one desire was to help the common man. Of course Joyce was a bigot, unreasonably dismissive of any contraryopinion to his own, and perfectly capable of closing his eyes to what was taking place in Nazi Germany. An ideological, if naïve fascist, his views, lead to problems with hisportrayal. I certainly have no desire to idealize Joyce, but at the same time Ithink that his story is worth being told in dramatic form. A . Colin Wright