Reluctant Peer
by William Douglas Home

A jolly play by the author of London and Broadway hit The Reluctant Debuante , this later comedy from Home's pen threatens to be become equally famous.

With Sybil Thorndike playing the role of the dowager, this splendidly droll comedy opened in London to rapturous reviews.

It was also suggested at the time that the peer of the title was the author's own brother, and that this was the humorous side of the story of how Lord Douglas-Home came to give up his title to become Prime Minister to Queen Elizabeth.

It is certainly an animated account, with the peer having to run for local election after surrendering his title forever; with his American wife so indignant that she decides to run against him and forestall his plans; and with the upper-crust butler so mortified that in order to save the title he enters the name of the peer's mother, the dowager, in the same election.

Perhaps the comic climax might have been avoided.

The daughter's fiance, however, happens to be a devout communist, British-style, and he throws enough wrenches into the machinery to bring everything to an explosive conclusion.

It's an irresistibly funny denouement, told in a devastastingly arch manner.