by Alan thornhill Oxford Group Pamphlet

The Signifance of the Life of Frank Buchman
(Allan Thornhill) 28 pages Allan Thornhill, formerly Fellow and Chaplain of
Hertford College, Oxford, has worked and travelled
extensively with Dr. Frank Buchman for many years.
He is the author of The Forgotten Factor and other
plays. the talk which follows was given at Caux, Switzerland, during the World Assembly for Moral
Re-Armament in 1949. This Assembly was attended
by eight thousand from eighty-two countries, including
representative of twenty-seven Parliaments, students
and staff from eighty-one Universities, and the elected officers of organizations representing ten million youth.
Mr. Thornhill's introduction to Remaking the World the the collected speeches of Dr. Buchman, is reprinted in this pamphlet after his address. Full Length Digital Reprint of this
Oxford Group Pamphlet

another page about alan thornhill

Westminster theater in London England
where many of thornhill's plays were produced
in the 1970's MRA became the owner of the theater

Biographical Outline

1906, March 16 Born in Liverpool � Alan Edward Carlos Thornhill
1929 Ordained
1935 Returned to Hertford, Oxford, as Fellow and Chaplain
1937 Resigned Fellowship to become chaplain of Wycliffe Hall
1939 Began traveling to promote the MRA (Moral ReArmament) movement
1940 Wrote The Forgotten Factor
1944, May 14 The Forgotten Factor premier in Washington, DC
1947 Married Barbara van Dyke
1957 Wrote The Crowning Experience
1976 Wrote Ride! Ride!
1986 Best of Friends published
1988, Dec 11 Died in Mark Cross, West Sussex
1988, Dec 19 Funeral, St. Denys Church, Rotherfield, Sussex

Other Plays
The Hurricane written with Peter Howard 1960
Music at Midnight with Peter Howard 1962
Give a Dog a Bone The Story of the Pantomime By Peter Howard illustrated by peter Howard

. The Hurricane (play) was first produced in 1960 at the World Assembly for Moral Re-Armament at Caux, in Switzerland. [...] Dr. Frank Buchman concluded his address at the opening of the Assembly at Caux with these words: 'It needs a hurricane of common sense to bring men to their senses, restoring the Communist and the non-Communist world to sanity and unity before it is too late. That hurricane is sweeping through every nation today, and in the midst of the hurricane the still small Voice of the living God, an unseen but ever-present Guide, willing and able to speak to the men of the Kremlin, the men of Washington, to the millions everywhere, leaders and led, who have lost their way and sek to find it.' (Introduction).

The late Reverend Alan Thornhill was educated at Oxford, where he returned later as a Fellow and Chaplain of Hertford College. He discovered his talent as a playwright in his 30s. His first play The Forgotten Factor, about an industrial relations dispute during the war years, premiered in Washington DC in 1940, and has since been translated into 16 languages, as well as being performed in London�s West End in 1946.

In 1957, Thornhill took the subject of Mary McLeod Bethune, the founder of the first African American college, for his first musical The Crowning Experience. It opened in Atlanta, Georgia, a controversial beginning for the show, with a multi-racial cast at a time when racial integration was yet to be achieved in the South, preceding the civil rights marches of the 1960s.

Several of Thornhill�s plays were produced throughout the 60s and 70s at the Westminster Theatre in London. In his last play, Sentenced To Life, Thornhill continued to be one step ahead of current debates with this challenging treatise on euthanasia, which ran for 9 months in London in 1978. He continued to write until his death in 1988.

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