Even at our birth, death does but stand aside a little. And every day he looks towards us and muses somewhat to himself whether that day or the next he will draw nigh.

The BBC production was reviewed in the Listener on 5 August 1954. A revival in the late 1960s featured Roy Kinnear as Fitz-Oblong. Later with Doctor Zhivago he invested Boris Pasternak's novel with the characteristic Bolt sense of narrative and dialogue - human short and telling.

Robert Oxton Bolt CBE (15 August 1924 – 21 February 1995) was an English playwright and a two-time Oscar-winning screenwriter.