"They are characterized by a refinement of mind and style that time is already beginning to prove are more than English public-school virtues and sleek techniques, as his strongest attackers claimed. Kenneth Tynan's labeling of him as the Formosa of the British theater and then Rattigan's subsequent creation of Aunt Edna, as well as his self-instituted debate in a "battle of the theatres," hounded him throughout most of his career. Yet, in what Hilary Spurling described as that "tricky but crucial (and so far almost wholly neglected) stretch of contemporary theatrical history when the stage became society's distorting mirror," Rattigan occupies a prominent place as the "oblique and delicate playwright of inarticulacy, repression, self-punishment, above all the damage people do to themselves.""