Editing J. B. Priestley (section)

== Career ==
Priestley's first major success came with a novel, ''[[The Good Companions]]'' (1929), which earned him the [[James Tait Black Memorial Prize]] for fiction and made him a national figure. His next novel, ''[[Angel Pavement]]'' (1930), further established him as a successful novelist. However some critics were less than complimentary about his work and Priestley threatened legal action against [[Graham Greene]] for what he took to be a defamatory portrait of him in the novel ''[[Stamboul Train]]'' (1932).

In 1934, he published the travelogue ''[[English Journey]]'', an account of what he saw and heard while travelling through the country in the depths of the [[Great Depression in the United Kingdom|Great Depression]].<ref>{{cite book | last=Marr | first=Andrew | author-link=Andrew Marr | title=A History of Modern Britain | year=2008 | page=[https://archive.org/details/historyofmodernb0000marr/page/ xxii] | publisher=Macmillan | isbn=978-0-330-43983-1 | url=https://archive.org/details/historyofmodernb0000marr/page/ }}</ref>

Priestley is today seen as having a prejudice against the Irish,<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/irish-butt-of-english-racism-for-more-than-eight-centuries-1342976.html|title=Irish butt of English racism for more than eight centuries|website=[[Independent.co.uk]]|date=23 October 2011}}</ref><ref name="Fagge2011">{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lNpNtZAB0yoC&pg=PA29|title=The Vision of J.B. Priestley|date=15 December 2011|publisher=A&C Black|isbn=978-1-4411-0480-9|pages=29–|first=Roger |last=Fagge}}</ref><ref name="Holmes2015">{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cdq9CgAAQBAJ&pg=PA149|title=John Bull's Island: Immigration and British Society, 1871–1971|date=16 October 2015|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-317-38273-7|pages=149–|first=Colin |last=Holmes}}</ref> as is shown in ''English Journey'': "A great many speeches have been made and books written on the subject of what England has done to Ireland... I should be interested to hear a speech and read a book or two on the subject of what Ireland has done to England... if we do have an [[Irish Republic]] as our neighbour, and it is found possible to return her exiled citizens, what a grand clearance there will be in all the western ports, from the Clyde to Cardiff, what a fine exit of ignorance and dirt and drunkenness and disease."<ref>J. B. Priestley, ''English Journey'' (London: William Heinemann, 1934), pp. 248–9</ref>

He moved into a new genre and became equally well known as a [[dramatist]]. ''[[Dangerous Corner]]'' (1932) was the first of many plays that would enthral West End theatre audiences. His best-known play is ''[[An Inspector Calls]]'' (1945). His plays are more varied in tone than the novels, several being influenced by [[J. W. Dunne]]'s theory of time, which plays a part in the plots of ''Dangerous Corner'' (1932) and ''[[Time and the Conways]]''.

In 1940, Priestley wrote an essay for ''[[Horizon (British magazine)|Horizon]]'' magazine in which he criticised [[George Bernard Shaw]] for his support of [[Joseph Stalin|Stalin]]: "Shaw presumes that his friend Stalin has everything under control. Well, Stalin may have made special arrangements to see that Shaw comes to no harm, but the rest of us in Western Europe do not feel quite so sure of our fate, especially those of us who do not share Shaw's curious admiration for dictators."<ref>J. B. Priestley, "The War — And After", in ''Horizon'', January 1940. Reprinted in Andrew Sinclair, ''War Decade: An Anthology of the 1940s'', Hamish Hamilton, 1989. {{ISBN|0241125677}} (p. 19).</ref>

During the [[Second World War]] he was a regular broadcaster on the [[British Broadcasting Corporation|BBC]]. The ''Postscript'', broadcast on Sunday night in 1940 and again in 1941, drew peak audiences of 16 million; only [[Winston Churchill|Churchill]] was more popular with listeners. [[Graham Greene]] wrote that Priestley "became in the months after Dunkirk a leader second only in importance to Mr Churchill. And he gave us what our other leaders have always failed to give us—an ideology."<ref>Cited in {{cite book<!-- {{sfn|Addison|2011|p=}} --> |title=The Road To 1945: British Politics and the Second World War |last=Addison |first=Paul |publisher=Random House |year=2011|isbn=978-1-4464-2421-6 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=C2hit1s8B04C&q=priestley}}</ref> But his talks were cancelled.<ref>{{cite book|title=Revisiting the Welfare State |series=Introducing Social Policy |last=Page |first=Robert M. |publisher=McGraw-Hill Education (UK) |year=2007 |page=10 |isbn=978-0-335-23498-1 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Os5EBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA10}}</ref> It was thought that this was the effect of complaints from Churchill that they were too left-wing; however in 2015 Priestley's son said in a talk on the latest book being published about his father's life that it was in fact Churchill's Cabinet that brought about the cancellation by supplying negative reports on the broadcasts to Churchill.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://cheltenhamfestivals.com/whats_on/event_detail.html?id=2545 |title=? |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080915121708/http://cheltenhamfestivals.com/whats_on/event_detail.html?id=2545 |archive-date=15 September 2008 }}</ref><ref name="biography">{{cite news|title=Priestley war letters published |publisher= BBC News website |url= http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7655113.stm |access-date=10 June 2008 | date=6 October 2008}}</ref>

Priestley chaired the [[1941 Committee]] and in 1942 he was a cofounder of the socialist [[Common Wealth Party]]. The political content of his broadcasts and his hopes of a new and different Britain after the war influenced the politics of the period and helped the [[Labour Party (UK)|Labour Party]] gain its landslide victory in the [[1945 United Kingdom general election|1945 general election]]. Priestley himself, however, was distrustful of the state and dogma, though he did stand for the [[Cambridge University (UK Parliament constituency)|Cambridge University]] constituency in 1945.

Priestley's name was on [[Orwell's list]], a list of people that George Orwell prepared in March 1949 for the [[Information Research Department]] (IRD), a propaganda unit set up at the [[Foreign Office]] by the Labour government. Orwell considered or suspected these people to have pro-communist leanings and therefore to be unsuitable to write for the IRD.<ref>{{cite news|title=Blair's babe Did love turn Orwell into a government stooge? |first=John |last=Ezard |newspaper=[[The Guardian]] |date=21 June 2003 |url=https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2003/jun/21/books.artsandhumanities |access-date=30 December 2008}}</ref>

Priestley was a founding member of the [[Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament]] in 1958.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2018/jun/17/jb-priestley-memoir-insight-vanities-friendships|title=Life with JB Priestley, by the woman he trusted most of all|date=17 June 2018|website=The Guardian|accessdate= 15 October 2022}}</ref>

In 1960, Priestley published ''Literature and Western Man'', a 500-page survey of [[Western literature]] in all its genres from the second half of the 15th&nbsp;century to the middle of the 20th century. (The last author discussed was [[Thomas Wolfe]].)

In 1964 Priestly joined the ''Who Killed Kennedy Committee?'' set up by [[Bertrand Russell]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Russell |first1=Bertrand |title=Autobiography |date=1998 |publisher=Routledge |page=707}}</ref>

His interest in the problem of time led him to publish an extended essay in 1964 under the title of ''Man and Time''. (Aldus published this as a companion to [[Carl Jung]]'s ''[[Man and His Symbols]]''.) In the book he explored in depth various theories and beliefs about time as well as his own research and unique conclusions, including an analysis of the phenomenon of [[precognitive dreams|precognitive dreaming]], based in part on a broad sampling of experiences gathered from the British public, who responded enthusiastically to a televised appeal he made while being interviewed in 1963 on the BBC programme ''[[Monitor (BBC TV)|Monitor]]''.

[[File:NMM Priestley 01.jpg|thumb|upright=1.3|right|Statue outside the [[National Science and Media Museum]] in [[Bradford]]]]
The [[University of Bradford]] awarded Priestley the title of honorary [[Doctor of Letters]] in 1970 and he was awarded the [[Freedom of the City]] of Bradford in 1973. His connections with the city were also marked by the naming of the J. B. Priestley Library at the University of Bradford, which he officially opened in 1975,<ref>[http://www.bradford.ac.uk/library/special-collections/collections/j-b-priestley-archive/ J. B. Priestley Archive] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130806101809/http://www.bradford.ac.uk/library/special-collections/collections/j-b-priestley-archive/ |date=6 August 2013 }}. University of Bradford. Retrieved 16 February 2016.</ref> and by the larger-than-life statue of him, commissioned by the [[Bradford City Council]] after his death and which now stands in front of the [[National Science and Media Museum]].<ref>[https://www.bbc.co.uk/bradford/content/articles/2008/09/26/priestley_lost_city_reaction_feature.shtml A "sentimental journey"? Priestley's Lost City]. bbc.co.uk (26 September 2008). Retrieved 2 May 2012.</ref>