by Emlyn Williams
Adapted for television by Harry Green
[Starring] Wendy Hiller
also starring Ronald Fraser, Stephanie Bidmead, Glyn Houston
and introducing John Ogwen as Morgan Evans

(John Ogwen is a member of the Welsh National Theatre Company)
(See page 28)

[Photo caption] John Ogwen as Morgan Evans and Adrienne Posta as Bessie Watty in a scene from tonight's Play of the Month at 9.20

A Welsh mining village where learning is frowned on: and anyone out of the ordinary is treated with suspicion. Into this setting comes a forty-year-old Englishwoman, Miss Moffat, who is intent on starting a school, of showing the children that there is a better, fuller life outside the mines, the public houses and the grim surroundings.
She encounters difficulties, principally the stubbornness of the local Squire who also owns half the mine and wants his workers kept in their place. She is almost reduced to giving up the venture when she reads an essay by fifteen-year-old Morgan Evans. She recognises in this essay - full of lofty phrases and mis-spellings though it is - a mind of unusual quality and she is certain that she must go on.
Emlyn Williams wrote the original play and he founded the work greatly on his own experiences. Miss Moffat is based on a Yorkshire schoolmistress, Miss Cooke, under whose influence the young Emlyn Williams started on his path to fame. At the age of ten he entered Holywell Court School and Miss Cooke taught him fluent English - until the age of eight he spoke only Welsh - and for seven years she guided him in his studies. Eventually he won a £350 scholarship to Christ Church, Oxford.
And Miss Cooke was in the audience to see the first night of this play by her protege when in opened in 1938 starring Sybil Thorndike.