Peter Barnes (10 January 1931 – 1 July 2004) [1] 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. [2]
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. [3]
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. [4] During this period he worked as a film critic, story editor, and a screenwriter. [5] He achieved critical and box-office success with his baroque comedy The Ruling Class (1968), which debuted at the Nottingham Playhouse. [6] The play was notorious for its anti-naturalistic approach, unusual in theatre at the time. [7] Critic Harold Hobson deemed it to be one of the best first plays of its generation. [4] 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. [8]
Following his initial success, Barnes wrote a series of plays offering apocalyptic visions of various periods in history:
In his later years Barnes turned his attention more in the direction of films, radio, and television. [11] His screenplay for Elizabeth von Arnim's The Enchanted April earned him a nomination for the best adapted screenplay Oscar in 1992. [13] He also wrote several hugely successful mini-series for U.S. television, including Arabian Nights , Merlin and Noah's Ark . [14] 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. [15] His television miniseries for ABC and NBC were the most popular of the day with record audiences. [16]
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). [17] [4] He was the Royal Shakespeare Company's most produced living playwright at the time. [18]
The last play that Barnes completed was Babies , which is based on his experiences as an elderly father. [3] His second wife gave birth to a daughter when he was 69, followed by triplets a year later. [19]
John Irvin directed his The Moon and the Stars with Alfred Molina about the film business in 1930s' Rome. [20] A revival of his Noonday Demons was produced by renowned theatre designer John Napier. [21] Barnes television miniseries are shown yearly as holiday favourites.
Barnes, who had two sons and two daughters, married twice – in 1958 to Charlotte Beck and in 1995 to Christie Horn. [1] His second wife, Christie, gave birth to his first daughter Leela in 2000 when he was 69. [8] Leela is a writer, following in her father's footsteps. Barnes, who received much American mainstream media attention for his movies and US television miniseries in later life, quickly became a tabloid obsession in 2002 when he became a father again at the age of 71. [22] This time Christie gave birth to triplets Abigail, Nathaniel and Zachary. [4] Barnes died of a stroke on 1 July 2004. [19]
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