Blue Remembered Hills

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Blue Remembered Hills is a television play by Dennis Potter, originally broadcast on January 30th 1979 as part of the BBC's Play for Today series.

The play concerns a group of seven year olds playing in the Forest of Dean one summer afternoon during 1943. It displays how victimisation and stereotypical views occur even in young children, and ends abruptly when the character of "Donald" is burned to death as a result of the other children's actions. The play, despite seeming very frivolous (bar the final scene) on first reading, is in fact reflecting on the human capability for brutality, especially in children, and is in a similar vein to William Golding's 'The Lord of The Flies'

The most striking feature of the play was that though the characters were children they were played by adult actors and actresses. The stars of the original production were:

Colin Welland (Willie), Michael Elphick (Peter), Robin Ellis (John), John Bird (Raymond), Helen Mirren (Angela), Janine Duvitski (Audrey), Colin Jeavons (Donald).

The screenplay has also been adapted for the theatre and, as such, remains one of Dennis Potter's best known and most successful plays. The play is now a standard text for GCSE Drama. It is featured in the 2008 AQA English Language and Literature Specification B A2 pre release material.

The title comes from the 40th poem (in Roman numerals XL) in A.E. Housman's A Shropshire Lad. The poem is read by Potter himself at the end of the BBC version of the play.