The Masters

The Masters is a dramatisation of the fifth novel in C. P. Snow’s series ’Strangers and Brothers’. It involves the election of a new master at narrator Lewis Eliot’s unnamed Cambridge College, which resembles Christ’s College, where Snow was a fellow. The play is set in 1937, with the growing threat from Nazi Germany as the backdrop. The two candidates are Crawford, who is politically radical and prepared to make sure the college makes a stand against appeasing Hitler, but whom Eliot believes will not be good at dealing with people; and Jago, whom Eliot believes would make a good master, but whose wife is seen by some as a liability. Much of the interest of the novel lies in its analysis of the motives and political manoeuvres of the people campaigning for their chosen candidates.