Kenneth Horne (writer)

Kenneth Horne (28 April 1900 – 5 June 1975) was an English writer and playwright. Born in Westminster, London, he was active between 1933 and 1970, and his works included A Lass and a Lackey, Fools Rush In, Trial and Error, Public Mischief and The Coming-Out Party, as well as film scripts.

Kenneth Horne was born in Westminster, London, on 28 April 1900. He read many works by George Bernard Shaw, and later the two men shared the same manager. During the Second World War, Horne worked in the Air Ministry.

Horne was married twice and had three sons, antiquities dealer Jonathan Horne, who was born on 13 November 1940 in Cornwall, Christopher, and Nicolas; Horne also had a daughter, Judith. He spent some time living in Croydon, Surrey.

Horne's first play to be performed in the West End of London was in 1934. In 1940 Horne wrote The Good Young Man, about a missionary's son from Papua New Guinea who goes to England to visit his family and find a wife. This was followed in 1941 with Love In A Mist, about a secretary and her boss' son who go on a weekend in Exmoor, only for the secretary to attempt to escape from her date. Horne's last play to be performed at the West End, A Public Mischief, ran in St Martin's Theatre in 1965. The play was about a woman who elopes with her lover while making her escape appear to be a boating accident. Though it received poor reviews, this play was later adapted to television. Horne's last play, The Coming Out Party, was performed in Bromley in 1970.

Horne made his film debut as a screenwriter in 1938's Almost a Honeymoon, adapting the farce of the same name by Walter Ellis. He wrote three further screenplays or scripts: Two Dozen Red Roses, a 1952 BBC television adaption from a work by Italian screenwriter Aldo de Benedetti; Aunt Clara in 1954, and On the Bridon Beat in 1964. Horne also recorded voice commentary, sometimes as a narrator, for several films and shorts, including in The Fibre Web (1963), The Story of Moses (1964), and Down Boy! (1964). He managed the dialogue for Fools Rush In, a 1949 comedy directed by John Paddy Carstairs.

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