Starring: Michael Elphick, Robin Ellis, Colin Welland, Helen Mirren.

"When we dream of childhood we take our present selves with us. It is not the adult world writ small; childhood is the adult world writ large" Dennis Potter.

Dennis Potter's acclaimed television play - though the most straightforward and realistic of his popular works - is both an hilarious and incredibly moving story. Through the simple act of using adults in the roles, Potter was able to emphasise the darker aspects of children's innocence and imagination, creating an altogether more complex and ambivalent picture of that "land of lost content". 

On an idyllic summer afternoon in the summer of 1943, a group of children play in the West Country hills, fields and forests. With no adults around, they indulge in spontaneous games and horseplay - sometimes echoing the distant war, at other times revealing their own insecurities and petty vindictiveness. 

But as they tease, fantasise and fight the day away, their innocence is about to be destroyed forever... 

Originally transmitted 30/01/1979.

Dennis Potter's play is set in the Forest of Dean

Play, Childhood

Incidentally, guys, the title of this comes from
a poem by A.E. Houseman.   "A Shropshire Lad".