This Above All (1941) is a novel by English writer Eric Knight. It was adapted into an Academy Award-winning movie in 1942. The title of the novel is derived from a quote by Polonius in William Shakespeare's Hamlet (Act 1, scene 3): "This above all: to thine own self be true,/ And it must follow, as the night the day,/ Thou canst not then be false to any man." Spending leave together on the South Coast during the Battle of Britain and the beginning of the blitz, Clive and Prudence have an affair. Having survived Dunkirk, but having a crisis of conscience over what the war is being fought for and disgusted at the incompetence of the ruling elite, Clive decides not to return to the Army and to go absent without leave.
Adaptations (1)
This Above All was adapted into a 1942 film.
This Above All1942 · film · 110 min · dir. Anatole Litvak · IMDb ↗IMDb6.6In 1940 England, aristocratic Prudence Cathaway alarms her snobbish parents by joining the WAF service branch. She soon meets and falls in love with the brooding Clive Briggs, despite his prejudice against the upper classes, and agrees to spend a week with him at a Dover hotel. When Clive's soldier friend, Monty, arrives to retrieve him, Prudence learns that Clive went AWOL after Dunkirk, and urges him to recall why England must fight the war.
