The Capek brothers' Expressionist plays were hugely in vogue during the 1930s and for some time after, particularly in Britain (The Insect Play used for many years to be available in an Everyman Library volume, incidentally). R.U.R. is chiefly remembered today for giving currency to the word "robot", which was the brothers' own invention. Their quasi surreal satire on bureaucracy, amoral scientism and dictatorship gave the plays a special intellectual urgency at the time, and unlike so many writer intellectuals, Josef Capek paid for his beliefs by dying in Belsen (his brother was spared a similar fate by dying in 1938, the year Hitler invaded his country). The translations from the Czech are by R Selver and have been further adapted for the stage by Nigel Playfair.