Staying On

Set in India in 1972, the action centres on a childless couple who are asked by the disapproving owner to leave the hotel annexe where they have eked out a forgotten existence since independence, 25 years earlier.

The Raj legacy informs every aspect of the story, from the peppery colonel's fondness for Indians and disdain for Anglo-Indians to the implication that the past is preventing the sub-continent from fulfilling its modern destiny.

But this is also a poignant study of enduring love, which is made all the more compelling by the fact the Smalleys are played by Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson, who were reuniting for the first time since Brief Encounter
(1945). Johnson conveys her loyalty and loneliness with typical understatement, leaving Howard to dominate as the irascible desk jockey whose tales of bygone days owe more to myth than memory.