Out of the Darkness

The story is about a mans conflict with his troubled past, the love of his family and his reputation as a genius falling into insanity. It is a story about middle class England in the 30s and 40s with all the horrors of war, prejudices and stigmas that go with narrow mindedness and bigotry. The story covers a mans life over sixty years and interacts between the present and the past and deals with rejection, ridicule, loneliness, bigotry, prejudice, but also through tragedy and comedy shows understanding, tenderness and love. George Maurice is a miserable, ill-tempered recluse who drinks far too much. He is an academic lecturer in chemistry and physics. Now in retirement he struggles with his conscience and his own self-belief. He has doubts on his abilities and begins to wonder if he is slowly going insane or his eccentricities are the product of his genius. To counterpoint these fears he retraces his life back through his middle class upbringing of the 1930s, with his parents who are cold, heartless and indifferent. His father is puritanical and a philanderer, his mother, just a snob and it is only his Nanny who shows him any affection. The Second World War shows him the horrors and the prejudices of war, until he meets Elizabeth, a clever compassionate strong-willed woman. But slowly over the years, George becomes trapped in his own world; stifled in an era long gone and now feels alien to progress and change. He is lost and struggles with the modern age and all its social and multi-cultural diversity, while his wife suffers from his curmudgeon ways and his daughter disowns him because of his behaviour and he becomes estranged from his gay son. Deterioration of his relationship with his family takes its toll, as it turns into tragic-comedy bringing George closer to a devastating and powerful conclusion.