S02E44 The Door In The Wall by H. G. Wells

H G Wells Herbert George Wells was born in 1866 in Bromley, Kent just outside London. He Died aged 79 at his grand house in Regent’s Park in London. He was a scientist by training having got his degree at Imperial College London (the Royal College of Science).  He was a biologist with a strong interest in Darwin and Natural Selection.  His early adult life was one of financial insecurity and job after job teaching and he earned his Bachelor of Science in 1890 through the University of London’s external teaching scheme.  In 1893 while teaching A A Milne (author of Winnie the Pooh) at a school in London, he published a biology text book. By 1895 he was contributing stories and articles to different periodicals.  Politically, he was a Socialist. His mother was a domestic servant and his father had been a servant gardener though later became a professional cricketer for the Kent county team and who had a sports shop which didn’t do very well.   Because his family struggled financially, they put him out as an apprentice as a draper. He worked a thirteen hour day and slept in a dormitory and his later novels Kipps and The History of Mr Polly describe this lower middle class or tradesmen’s life. He suffered from Diabetes and founded the Diabetic Association in 1934. He was a progressive futurist who foresaw many modern developments such as tanks, space travel, nuclear weapons and satellite TV. His books deal with time travel (The Time Machine) and alien invasion (The War of the Worlds). The Door in The Wall by H G Wells The Door in the Wall was first published in The Daily Chronicle in 1906, when he was forty, and reprinted in Wells’s collection The Door In The Wall And Other Stories published in 1911. It is one of Wells’s most well-known stories, and he wrote at least a hundred short stories, mostly in the early part of his career. The story is told to Redmond, and this device of having a story introduced to an otherwise blank hearer, who then learns of the ending of the story and make