George Bernard Shaw - Press Cuttings

Arthur Lowe stars as General Mitchener in an adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's Press Cuttings.

Written in 1909, Shaw pokes fun at the suffragettes' British campaign for votes for women. General Mitchener (Lowe) is a veteran of the North West Frontier, but how is he going to cope with a suffragette found chained outside to a door scraper - who turns out to be the Prime Minister in disguise, dressed in women's clothing?

But Michener has a plan: "The Suffragettes are a very small body; but they are numerous enough to be troublesome - even dangerous - when they are all concentrated in one place.... but by making a two-mile radius and pushing them beyond it, you scatter their attack over a circular line 12 miles long. Just what Wellington would have done."

Co-starring Joan Sanderson as Mrs Banger and Gerald Cross as Mr Balsquith.

Adapted by Jack Willis and produced by David H Godfrey.

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1971