Nye & Jennie

As the founder of the NHS, Aneurin Bevan is well known but less has been documented in the media about his wife Jennie Lee. Lee became the youngest woman at the time to be elected to Parliament. As the first Arts Minister she left a legacy of her own including the foundation of the Open University in 1969 which will celebrate its fiftieth anniversary in 2019. Aneurin Bevan and Jennie Lee were comrades and flatmates who together fought and preached for socialism as they saw it; he the Tredegar firebrand on the Labour backbenches, she the miner’s daughter from Fife who became a Socialist MP before she was old enough to vote. Then they were married; he deeply in love with her; she on the rebound from a tragic love affair. Both of them were loved and loathed by their fellow MP’s; he the Bollinger Bolshevik; she his Lady Macbeth, the dark angel at his shoulder. Life together unfolded through the desolate war years, the trials of founding the NHS, and the vicious internal feuds of the 1950’s. But as it did so their love deepened and matured. This is the story of a partnership that became one of the outstanding political marriages of the twentieth century. Meredydd Barker’s play introduces us to the power couple of their day, their relationship, the preparation for the biggest moments in their careers and the people behind the public images. The play spans their life together from flatmates, their marriage in 1934, to Nye’s death in 1960, marking notable events in their public and private life along the way.