ANDREW (WYNFORD) DAVIES. Born in Rhiwbina, Cardiff, Wales, 20 September 1936. Attended Whitchurch Grammar School, Cardiff; University College, London, B.A. in English, 1957. Married Diana Huntley in 1960; children: one son and one daughter. Began career as teacher at St Clement Danes Grammar School, London, 1958-61, and Woodberry Down Comprehensive School, London, 1961-63; lecturer, Coventry College of Education, 1963-71, and University of Warwick, Coventry, 1971-87. Wrote first play for radio, 1964; television and film writer; author of several stage plays and fiction aimed at both young and adult audiences. Recipient: Guardian Children's Fiction Award, 1979; Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, 1980; Broadcast Press Guild Award, 1980, 1990; Pye Colour TV Award, 1981; Royal Television Society Award, 1987; British Academy of Film and Television Arts Award, 1989, 1993; Writers Guild Award, 1991, 1992; Primetime Emmy Award, 1991. Address: Lemon, Unna and Durbridge, 24 Pottery Lane, London W11 4LZ, U.K.

TELEVISION SERIES (selection)

1980      To Serve Them All My Days
1986-88 A Very Peculiar Practice
1989     Mother Love
1990     House of Cards
1993     To Play the King
1994     Middlemarch
1995     Game On (with Bernadette Davis)
1995     Pride and Prejudice

TELEVISION PLAYS (selection)

1967 Who's Going to Take Me On?
1970 Is That Your Bod, Boy?
1973 No Good Unless It Hurts
1974 The Water Maiden
1975 Grace
1975 The Imp of the Perverse
1976 The Signalman
1976 A Martyr to the System
1977 Eleanor Marx
1977 Happy in War
1977 Velvet Glove
1978 Fearless Frank
1978 Renoir My Father
1981 Bavarian Night
1983 Heartattack Hotel
1984 Diana
1985 Pythons on the Mountain
1987 Inappropriate Behaviour
1988 Lucky Sunil
1988 Baby, I Love You
1991 Filipina Dreamers
1992 The Old Devils
1992 Anglo-Saxon Attitudes
1992 A Very Polish Practice
1993 Anna Lee
1993 Harnessing Peacocks
1994 A Few Short Journeys of the Heart

FILM
Circle of Friends

RADIO

The Hospitalization of Samuel Pellett, 1964; Getting the Smell of It, 1967; A Day in Bed, 1967; Curse on Them, Astonish Me!, 1970; Steph and the Man of Some Distinction, 1971; The Innocent Eye, 1971; The Shortsighted Bear, 1972; Steph and the Simple Life, 1972; Steph and the Zero Structure Lifestyle, 1976; Accentuate the Positive, 1980; Campus Blues, 1984.

STAGE

Can Anyone Smell the Gas?, 1972; The Shortsighted Bear, 1972; Filthy Fryer and the Woman of Mature Years, 1974; Linda Polan: Can You Smell the Gas?, What Are Little Girls Made Of?, 1975; Rohan and Julia, 1975; Randy Robinson's Unsuitable Relationship, 1976; Teacher's Gone Mad, 1977; Going Bust, 1977; Fearless Frank, 1978; Brainstorming with the Boys, 1978; Battery, 1979; Diary of a Desperate Woman, 1979; Rose, 1980; Prin, 1990.

PUBLICATIONS (Selection)

The Fantastic Feats of Doctor Boox. London: Collins, 1972.

Conrad's War. London, Blackie, 1978.

Marmalade and Rufus. (1st American edition), New York: Crown, 1980.

Poonam's Pets (with Diana Davies). (1st American edition), New York: Viking, 1990.

B. Monkey. London: Lime Tree, 1992.

Andrew Davies is an incredibly prolific BAFTA and Emmy award winning writer and adapter. He began his career in 1960 writing radio plays, moving later into television, stageplays, children's books, novels, and films. He combined writing with his work as a teacher, then university lecturer, until the age of 50. Both professions inform some of his writing, for example his highly autobiographical Bavarian Night (BBC Play for Today), which deals with a Parent-Teacher Association evening and the hugely successful series A Very Peculiar Practice, about general practitioners on a university campus.

Davies has long been recognized as writing well for women. He created the character Steph Smith as a vehicle for his "early feminist plays" for radio. Steph was a knicker factory worker aspiring to the life of the sales representative. Davies first play for television, Who's Going to Take Me On?, (on Wednesday Play), also featured Steph.

The mainstay of his television work has been for the BBC. Initially he felt himself in danger of being regarded solely as a writer of BBC naturalistic material, and turned to non-naturalistic writing, such as Fearless Frank Harris, in the early 1970s. His other original television work includes A Very Polish Practice, a one-off sequel to his series, and the pilot for the London Weekend Television series, Anna Lee.

Davies is also well known for a great many adaptations and dramatisations which have won him a string of awards. Following dramatisations of R.F. Deiderfield, To Serve Them All My Days, and Diana, he has adapted a host of very high profile dramas for the BBC. After the success of dramatisations of Michael Dobbs' House of Cards and its sequel, To Play the King (for which he was accused of a left-wing bias), he was commissioned for the much-heralded, expensive and extensive version of George Eliot's Middlemarch, at the time the BBC's most costly drama serial. His adaptation was praised by in the trade press as a fast moving while remaining faithful to the original.

Having suggested that adapting Jane Austen must be a thankless task, since so many viewers know her books word for word, Davies dramatised Pride and Prejudice. This BBC serial was another great popular and critical success, despite the fact that it was preceded by strong reactions from tabloid newspapers over the possibility it might feature nudity.

Davies enjoys adapting other authors' work, grateful for the existing plot in which to exercise his own humour and explore his preoccupations. There are also those originals he admires to the extent that he wishes solely to do them justice. In this category he cites Anglo-Saxon Attitudes and The Old Devils. He was involved in a very public struggle to get screen time for Anglo Saxon Attitudes, attacking ITV's "flexipool" (or "indecision pool") in the process. It was then commissioned on the back of discussions regarding "quality."

As well as writing numerous children's books, Davies is also an award-winning writer of children's television. He wrote two original series of Marmalade Atkins for Thames TV, and dramatised Alfonso Bonzo as a six-part serial from his own children's novel. He has also written feature film screenplays, including Circle of Friends and an adaptation of his own book, B. Monkey.

-Guy Jowett