A rich selection from the best of Nichols' work up to and including his award-winning Privates on Parade A Day in the Death of Joe Egg is based on the author's experience of having a mentally handicapped child and won the John Whiting Award; The National Health was commissioned by Kenneth Tynan for the National theatre and follows the story of a Labour MP who goes into a state hospital suffering from a nervous collapse. It won the Evening Standard Best Play Award; Forget-me-not Lane is a trip down memory lane from the author's own childhood growing up in the West Country; Hearts and Flowers is a TV play about the rivalry between two brothers, one a school teacher living in Bristol the other a successful news journalist and their shared interest in a woman; Freeway is set in a traffic jam and attempts to answer the question of why the automobile has come to be seen to represent liberty incarnate in the modern era.
Includes the early plays, "A Day in the Death of Joe Egg", "The National Health" and "Forget-Me-Not Lane". Each play is introduced by the author with extracts from his diary. This edition is being published alongside "Nichols Plays: Two".
