J.B.Priestley was born on the 13thSeptember 1894, in a middle class home in Bradford, Yorkshire, which was a large industrial area that produced cotton in the mills. Priestley grew up in a thoroughly middle class home in a place where socialist ideals thrived, and was proud of the fact that his grandparents were mill workers.
             He gained real experience and understanding of working class life and people when writing 'Rain upon Godshill' (1939). It was about his visits to "grandparents and uncles and aunts who still lived in the wretched little 'back to back' houses in the long, dark streets behind the mills.'' He uses 'An Inspector Calls' to expose the exploitation and oppression of the lower classes by the higher classes at that time.
             Priestley set the play in 1912, thirty years earlier than when he wrote it, this way he was able to use dramatic irony to emphasise his point that the higher classes weren't as unbreakable as they believed themselves to be, and shouldn't have been quite so complacent. For example, during one of his rambling speeches, Birling says,
             "...just because the miners came out on strike, there's a lot of wild talk about possible labour trouble in the near future. Don't worry. We've passed the worst of it". While the audience know that there were more industrial strikes in 1920 and 1926. Birling also says,
             "...some people say that war's inevitable. And to that I say – fiddlesticks! ... Nobody wants war", and this play was first viewed in 1945, just after World War Two. The dramatic irony shows the audience that Birling isn't as knowledgeable as he would like to think, - he appears slightly foolish.
             Arthur Birling is a wealthy businessman who owns 'Birling & Company.' Men such as Arthur Birling, who had invested in such industries as coal, pottery, textiles, and iron and steel, made consi...