Alan Plater (Alan Frederick Plater) Biography

British playwright, born in Jarrow-on-Tyne, he was educated at King's College, Newcastle-on-Tyne. His early work for television includes the plays The Referees (1961) and See the Pretty Lights (1963) and the scripting of eighteen episodes of the popular Z Cars series between 1963 and 1965. Charlie Came to Our Town (1966) was the first of the works for the stage he wrote with the composer Alex Glasgow; his other collaborations with Glasgow include Close the Coalhouse Door (1968), their celebrated ‘musical documentary’ about the mining communities in the north-east of England, and Simon Says (1970), a satire on the British class system. Among his many other works for television are The Crystal Spirit: Orwell on Jura (1983), Edward Lear: On the Edge of the Sand (1985), and Misterioso (1987). Plater has also written screenplays, notably for D. H. Lawrence's The Virgin and the Gipsy (1970), and numerous popular novels which include The Beiderbecke Affair (1985) and Oliver's Travels (1994).