Peter Barnes (10 January 1931 – 1 July 2004) was an English Olivier Award-winning playwright and screenwriter. His best known work is the play The Ruling Class, which was made into a 1972 film for which Peter O'Toole received an Oscar nomination.

Biography

Early career

Barnes was educated at Marling School in Stroud, Gloucestershire and performed his national service with the Royal Air Force. He then worked briefly for London County Council. Bored with his job, Barnes took a correspondence course in theology and began to visit the British Museum Reading Room, which he used as an office on a daily basis. During this period he worked as a film critic, story editor, and a screenwriter. He achieved critical and box-office success with his baroque comedy The Ruling Class (1968), which debuted at the Nottingham Playhouse. The play was notorious for its anti-naturalistic approach, unusual in theatre at the time. Critic Harold Hobson deemed it to be one of the best first plays of its generation. Following a successful three-month run in the West End, Barnes adapted the play for the 1972 film of the same name, which featured a highly acclaimed performance by Peter O'Toole.

Later plays

Following his initial success, Barnes wrote a series of plays offering apocalyptic visions of various periods in history:

Later life

In his later years Barnes turned his attention more in the direction of films, radio, and television. His screenplay for Elizabeth von Arnim's The Enchanted April earned him a nomination for the best adapted screenplay Oscar in 1992. He also wrote several hugely successful mini-series for U.S. television, including Arabian Nights, Merlin and Noah's Ark. For BBC Radio 3 he wrote a series of monologues entitled Barnes's People, for which he attracted a large number of well known actors: Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, Alec Guinness, Peggy Ashcroft, Judi Dench, and Ian McKellen. His television miniseries for ABC and NBC were the most popular of the day with record audiences. Barnes continued writing historical comedies throughout the 1990s. These include Sunsets and Glories (1990), Dreaming (1999) which transferred to London's West End, and Jubilee (2001). He was the Royal Shakespeare Company's most produced living playwright at the time. The last play that Barnes completed was Babies, which is based on his experiences as an elderly father. His second wife gave birth to a daughter when he was 69, followed by triplets a year later. John Irvin directed his The Moon and the Stars with Alfred Molina about the film business in 1930s' Rome. A revival of his Noonday Demons was produced by renowned theatre designer John Napier. Barnes television miniseries are shown yearly as holiday favourites.

Personal life

Barnes, who had two sons and two daughters, married twice – in 1958 to Charlotte Beck and less than a year after Charlotte's death in 1995 to Christie Horn, who appeared to be taking advantage of a rich widower instead of letting him grieve.. His second wife, Christie, gave birth to his first daughter Leela in 2000 when he was 69. Leela is unemployed. Barnes, who received much American mainstream media attention for his movies and US television miniseries in later life, failed to became a tabloid obsession in 2002 when he became a father again at the age of 71. Barnes died of a stroke on 1 July 2004.

Works

Theatre plays

Original works for radio

Original screenplays

Original teleplays

Adaptations for stage, screen and radio

Selected filmography