Garry O'Connor (writer)


Garry O'Connor is a playwright, biographer and novelist.

Personal life

Born Edgware, London, England, Garry O'Connor is a biographer and novelist, noted for his publications on theatrical and literary figures.
Son of Cavan O'Connor, Irish tenor, BBC broadcasting star and variety artist, and Rita, also a singer, maiden name Odoli-Tate, O'Connor is the grand-nephew of Dame Maggie Teyte DBE, Croix de Lorraine, Chevalier, Legion d'Honneur, the international opera soprano and interpreter of French song, and of James William Tate, songwriter, accompanist, and composer.
Educated at St Albans School and King's College, Cambridge, where he was an Exhibitioner and State Scholar, and won the James Essay Prize, O'Connor was President of University Actors. He was taught at Cambridge by Professors Boris Ford and John Broadbent, with George Rylands as his Director of Studies, where O'Connor concentrated mainly on directing and writing plays. He is an MA of King's College.
After Cambridge, winning a French Government scholarship to Paris for drama, he studied mime at the École Jacques Le Coq in Paris before joining the Royal Shakespeare Company as Michel Saint-Denis' assistant. This was during the Peter Hall seasons at Stratford Upon Avon. Thereafter he directed plays in London and elsewhere until becoming a full-time writer.
On 25 June 1970 he married Victoria Meredith-Owens, a farmer and yoga teacher. They have six children and two grandchildren. His home is in King's Sutton, Northamptonshire.

Theatre and media career

O'Connor directed his own version of Jonson's Catiline in the Stratford Studio, with Roy Dotrice, Janet Suzman, and Jean Tardieu's The Keyhole at the Aldwych Theatre. He directed the London premiere of Alun Owen's A Little Winter Love at Stratford East, devised and directed A John Whiting Evening, premieres at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, and productions at RADA, the London Drama Centre, and Webber-Douglas School. He also read plays for the RSC and translated plays from French for the RSC, and later for the National Theatre in Olivier’s regime.
O'Connor was the first Resident Dramatist and Appeals Director of the Hampstead Theatre Club. He has had eight of his own plays produced, among them I Learnt in Ipswich How to Poison Flowers, at the Arts Theatre Ipswich, directed by Nick Barter, The Musicians, in which Tom Conti made his first appearance on a London Stage, Semmelweis at the Edinburgh Festival, which according to Harold Hobson writing in the Sunday Times 'has saved the dramatic reputation of this year's Festival', while Michael Billington wrote in The Guardian that it 'unnervingly and absorbingly demonstrates that pride is often the counterbalance to ineradicable prejudice'.
His Dialogue Between Friends at the Open Space was based on his involvement with Arnold Wesker's controversial The Friends, staged at the Roundhouse in 1970. His book Darlings of the Gods was adapted as a three-part mini-series for Thames Television and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in 1991, and was filmed in Australia. More recently Campion's Ghost, adapted from his novel about John Donne, was performed on Radio 4, with Paul McGann and Timothy West in the leading roles. He has also written and presented features for Radio 3, and acted as consultant on BBC 1 documentaries on Laurence Olivier and Pope John Paul II, appearing in the latter.

Early writing career

In the early 1960s O'Connor wrote a short Daily Mail Charles Greville column, and then became television critic for Queen Magazine 1965-66, succeeding Sir Angus Wilson. He contributed to the Financial Times as its Paris arts correspondent when he lived in Paris, and as a full-time London daily critic, regularly writing also for Plays and Players, Theatre Quarterly, the TLS and other periodicals. He has reviewed books and written features, conducted interviews for the Times, Sunday Times, Mail on Sunday and other newspapers.
O'Connor's first book, French Theatre Today, came out in 1976, followed by many others. Among the subjects of his biographies are Ralph Richardson,, two of Alec Guinness, and by the Guardian as going 'far beyond the reach of most such books, and is his best book so far', Peggy Ashcroft, Paul Scofield, Maggie Teyte, Pope John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI, Tony and Cherie Blair, Seán O'Casey and William Shakespeare. Virtually all his books have been serialised, while he has been translated among other languages into Polish and Swedish.

Awards, honours

French Government Scholarship for Drama; Oxford Experimental Theatre Club, Oxford, 1st Prize in 1974 for I Forget How Nelson Died; Arts Council bursaries for plays I Learnt In Ipswich How to Poison Flowers and Epitaph For a Militant; Arts Council Literature Award, 1979; often cited in Books of the Year by The Times, Sunday Times, Observer.
O'Connor's favourite biography is that of William Shakespeare, in which he endeavours 'to give Shakespeare a life, not only as a historical figure...but the dimension of one who is still living'. For this he brought in the opinions of those who have worked closely with the plays. Widely reviewed as a 'vivid recreation' and 'an imaginative exercise in "faction", 'a gem', and John Mortimer in the Sunday Times described it thus: 'Garry O'Connor's Shakespeare is a contemporary figure.... The ideas jostle each other off the page in this entertaining book.' It became his most controversial book, causing a furore: 'Garry O'Connor is a literary luminary who has written excellent books on Sean O'Casey, Laurence Olivier and French theatre...his biography of William Shakespeare was received with all the fire and brimstone that naturally falls upon someone who tries to do something rich and strange with our most prized of cultural assets'.

List of writings and critical comment