Robert Holman Biography

British dramatist, born in Guisborough, Cleveland, the son of a farmer, educated at the local grammar school. His most successful plays are marked by a strong sense of atmosphere, usually that of his native north Yorkshire, and the understated style in which he evokes ordinary people and their relationships. Among these are Mud (1974) and German Skerries (1977), set on a cliff overlooking the North Sea and involving the birdwatchers who gather there; Rooting (1979), set on a pig farm and touching on the subject of rural depopulation; The Estuary (1980), about a father and son's fishing expedition and, by extension, their family's troubles; and the more ambitious Other Worlds (1983), about the impact on a farming and fishing community of the threat of Napoleonic invasion. Since then his plays, though still quiet and unpretentious in tone, have grown in political and social resonance. They include Examples Are Today (1984), a look at the pre-Second World War period through the experience of men who went to fight in the Spanish Civil War; The Overgrown Path (1985), set on the Greek island of Tinos and mainly involving the expatriate professor who helped develop the H-bomb; the trilogy Making Noise Quietly (1986), several of whose characters have been touched by war and violence; and Across Oka (1989), about the edgy relationship of an English and a Russian boy entrusted with taking the fertilized egg of the near-extinct Siberian crane to its natural habitat. He has also written for television, notably Chance of a Lifetime and This Is History, Gran.