John Boynton Priestley was born in 1894 in Bradford, a city in the north of England, in what he famously described as an "ultra respectable" suburb, perhaps not too dissimilar from Brumley, the aspiring middle-class town in which the Birlings of An Inspector Calls reside. Priestly studied at a grammar school, after which he spent some time working as a junior clerk in a wool office.
In 1914, Priestley joined the army and during World War I served in the Duke of Wellington's Regiment, 10th Battalion. In 1916, he was wounded by mortar fire. In his volume of reminiscences, Margin Released (1962), he reflects on his early life and war service, and is aggressively critical of the...
