Simon Gray
- Hayling Island
- Judy Daish Associates Ltd
Biography
Simon Gray was born in 1936 in Hayling Island, and studied at Westminster School, Dalhousie University, and Trinity College, Cambridge.
He wrote many stage, radio and television plays, and the screenplays for Butley and A Month in the Country, after the novel by J. L. Carr. He often returned to the subject of the lives and trials of educated intellectuals.
His stage plays include adaptations of Dostoyevsky's The Idiot (1971) and Moliere's Tartuffe (1990); Butley (1971); Otherwise Engaged (1991), winner of several awards, and its sequel, Simply Disonnected (1996); Molly (published in The Rear Column and other plays, 1978), a 1930s murder, inspired by the notorious Rattenbury case; Quartermaine's Terms (1981), about the lives of seven teachers in a school in the 1960s; and Melon (1987), in which Mark Melon addresses the Cheltenham WI on his career as a successful publisher, later revised as The Holy Terror (1990). He directed three of his plays himself: The Common Pursuit (1984); Cell Mates (1995); and Hidden Laughter (1990). His last plays are The Old Masters (2004), about art experts Berenson and Duveen; and Little Nell (2007), a play about Charles Dickens, first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2006, and premiering at the Theatre Royal, Bath in 2007.
His plays for television include After Pilkington (1987); They Never Slept; and Running Late. He also wrote five novels, including Little Portia (1967) and Breaking Hearts (1997).
Simon Gray also wrote several non-fiction works about life in the theatre and outside it, and is particularly well-remembered for his witty and engaging memoirs, including four volumes of his daily journals: The Smoking Diaries (2004); The Year of the Jouncer (2006); The Last Cigarette (2008); and Coda (2008).
Simon Gray was awarded a CBE in 2005 for services to drama and literature. He died in August 2008.
