Ben Travers, best known for his farces of the 1920s and 1930s, was born in Hendon, London, during the reign of Queen Victoria. He was the son of middle-class parents, Walter Francis and Margaret Burgess Travers. He was educated at the Abbey School, Beckenham Surrey, and at Charterhouse, Surrey. Not showing particular promise in any subject, he left Charterhouse in 1904 to enter the family wholesale grocery business. Because he showed little aptitude for business, he was soon sent to the Singapore office in Malacca, where he spent most of his time at the public library studying the plays of Arthur Wing Pinero. It was from these plays that Travers derived his technique of playwriting. He wrote: "I discovered for myself the real secret of Pinero's mastery and success, the observance, in every line and every episode, of the value of climax." It was more than a decade before...