The Red Pen
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The Red Pen is a two-act light opera, written by A. P. Herbert and with music composed by Geoffrey Toye.
The story is set in the present day (the late 1920s), and opens with the somewhat whimsical premise that the "General Federation of Poets and Writers", a trade-union for authors, is agitating for the nationalisation of their industry. ("The Red Pen", from which the play takes its title, is their march, a play on The Red Flag). Act II, set six months later, shows us the newly-established Ministry of Verse, run in true bureaucratic Civil Service style.
The play was written for the BBC, following his successful Riverside Nights, and first broadcast on the radio on February 7th, 1927.