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Adrian Roy Bradshaw Mourby (born 1955) [1] worked for many years as an international opera correspondent and as a producer of operas and BBC dramas. He currently works primarily as a writer and journalist. [2] [3] [4]
Son of Roy Mourby and Peggy, daughter of Charles Edward Bradshaw, a regimental sergeant major, [5] [6] Mourby graduated from the University of Wales, Lampeter and Bristol University Film School. Roy Mourby, who grew up in Wales, was a teacher, and served with the Air Ministry in the Second World War. [7] Mourby's great-grandfather, Tom Mourby, was a former Merchant Navy chief engineer who went on to run gasworks on the Welsh border, later owning one and establishing a family firm later taken over by Mourby's grandfather. [8]
Mourby worked as a producer at the BBC for twelve years, where, amongst other series, he produced a television adaptation of Sir Kingsley Amis' The Old Devils . For these productions, he won numerous national and international awards [Smith/Kline 1982/ Sony 1985/BAFTA Cymru 1991 /Golden Gate 1993/ / BAFTA Cymru 1993 / Celtic Film Festival 1994/ New York Festivals 1994 / Sony 1995], before turning to full-time writing, broadcasting and opera production.
He has published several novels, including We Think the World of Him (1996) The Four of Us (1997) Wishdaughter (2004). He wrote the 1994 BBC Radio 4 series Whatever Happened to ...? about the further adventures of various fictional characters, for which he won the Sony Silver Award for Creative Writing on Radio. In 1997, his book "Whatever Happened to ...?: The Ultimate Sequels" was published with more such tales.
Mourby is a prolific programme essayist working in the UK and Europe. His own opera productions include Semele (Malta 2002) Cosi fan tutte (Oxford 2004) Marriage of Figaro (Blewbury Festival 2006). In 2015 he worked as dramaturg on Wienerstaatsoper's Idomeneo. In 2007 Mourby was awarded the Special Award for Opera Journalism by the Fondazione Festival Pucciniamo, Italy. In 2010 he was one of the finalists for UK Travel Journalist of the Year and in 2013 won the award for Best Travel Article in a Magazine (Italian Tourist Board). Mourby has also written AA guides to Venice, Brussels and Bruges and contributed to various Dorling Kindersley travel guides.
In June 2017 Icon Press published two books based on Mourby's travels round the world "Rooms of One's Own" focussed on places where great works of literature were written. Its sequel, "Rooms with a View" told the story of 50 grand hotels around the world. "Rooms of One's Own " was Highly Commended in the 2018 British Guild of Travel Writers Awards in the Best Narrative Travel Book category.
In January 2019 Mourby was Writer in Residence on Ocean Drive, Miami a post sponsored by The Betsy Hotel. In the Summer of 2019 he was guest lecturer on a number of opera tours of Italy with even more tours lined up in 2020. As a writer on opera and travel- two things that abruptly ceased in 2020- Mourby saw a career that had become too busy suddenly implode during the Covid lockdowns. He continued to write about Greece- and even managed to visit twice during 2020- but he returned to writing fiction in the quiet months of that lost year and wrote the novel Flora Antiparos.[ citation needed ]
Gruffudd Maredudd Bowen Rhys is a Welsh musician, composer, producer, filmmaker and author. He performs solo and with several bands, including Super Furry Animals, which obtained mainstream success in the 1990s. He formed the electro-pop outfit Neon Neon with Boom Bip. Their album Stainless Style was nominated for the 2008 Nationwide Mercury Prize. He won the 2011 Welsh Music Prize for his album Hotel Shampoo, which was followed up by American Interior in 2014, accompanied by a film, a book and a mobile app. His most recent album, Seeking New Gods, was released in 2021. He is considered a figurehead of the era known as Cool Cymru.
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Whatever Happened to ..? is a series of eleven plays broadcast in two series on BBC Radio 4 in 1994 and 1995. They covered the fate of various fictional characters, such as Popeye and Susan Foreman, the granddaughter of the Doctor in Doctor Who. The writer was Adrian Mourby, who in 1997 published a book called Whatever Happened to ...?: The Ultimate Sequels Book, in a similar vein with the further adventures of Frankenstein's Monster, The Artful Dodger, Snow White, Romeo, Big Bad Wolf, Pinocchio, Man Friday, Jane Eyre, Dorothy Gale from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and Jim Hawkins.
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Jonathan Tudor "Jonny" Owen is a Welsh producer, actor and writer who has appeared in TV shows including Shameless, Murphy's Law and My Family. Owen won a Welsh BAFTA in 2007 for the documentary The Aberfan Disaster which he co-produced with Judith Davies.
John Hefin MBE was a Welsh television producer and director who served as head of drama at BBC Wales. He began working for the BBC in 1960, and his career at the corporation included devising the long-running Welsh soap opera Pobol y Cwm, co-writing and directing the comedy film Grand Slam, and producing the 1981 biopic The Life and Times of David Lloyd George. He was later involved with the work of Film Cymru, the Film Commission Wales, and the media journal Cyfrwng. He also worked in the Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies at Aberystwyth University. He died from cancer in November 2012.
In My Skin is a British comedy drama television series written by Kayleigh Llewellyn that premiered on BBC Three on 14 October 2018. The series was initially ordered as a short film for BBC Wales, but this later acted as the pilot episode after BBC ordered In My Skin as a full series. The series stars Gabrielle Creevy, James Wilbraham, Poppy Lee Friar, Jo Hartley, Aled ap Steffan, Di Botcher, Georgia Furlong and Rhodri Meilir. In March 2021, In My Skin was renewed for a second and final series, which premiered on 7 November 2021. The series has received critical acclaim, as well as numerous awards from ceremonies including BAFTA Cymru and the RTS Programme Awards.
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