Asked by director David Lean to write a script about the development of new high speed jet aircraft, esteemed playwright Terence Rattigan (The Browning Version) was reluctant. But a visit to Farnborough Air Display and meeting test pilots fired his imagination. The result, about the troubled relationship between an aircraft manufacturer, his daughter and her test-pilot husband, raises still relevant issues about the cost, purpose and benefit of technological advance. It also reveals the profound humanism of its director and screenwriter.