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Peter Nichols was born on July 31, 1927, in Bristol, United States. -
Peter Nichols is an English playwright, screenwriter, director, and journalist. Over the decades, he produced a huge amount of work: 32 stage plays, 25 television plays, 11 films, seven novels, an autobiography, a collection of poems and a book of his diary entries. -
Peter lived in Oxford, previously in Devon, Bristol, Shropshire, and mostly London. -
After national serval in India, Malaya serves as an and Hong kong, he was an actor in repertory theatre and telephone for 5 years and then became a teacher in London Schools. -
His father was a sales representative, his mother a homemaker who gave piano lessons at home. Peter often went to the theater with his father. Those visits left him stage-struck and determined to pursue a theatrical career. -
He had an uncle who was a theatrical agent, and took him on theatre visits from an early age.
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Peter's life changed when he won a BBC Bristol television playwriting competition in 1959 for his bitter family comedy "A Walk on the Grass. " This led to several other television commissions, as well as a script-writing job for the director John Boorman.
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In 1960 Peter married Thelma Reed, who survives him, along with three children, a son Dan, two daughters, Louise and Catherine, with seven grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. -
A major break for Mr. Nichols came in 1965 after his friend the filmmaker John Boorman persuaded him to write the screenplay for his production of “Catch Us if You Can” , a comedy featuring the pop band the Dave Clark Five. The money he earned from it bought Mr. Nichols time to fulfill his ambition to write for the stage.
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Peter Nichols is most known for his popular 1967 play " A Day in the Death of Joe Egg," that challenged taboos about children with disabilities. -
The play is about a married couple Sheila and Bri who share their struggles as they raise a severly-handi-capped daughter.
This play was an attempted to " cicatrize the scar " said Peter Nichols, like his first daughter Abigail, had a difficult birth that had left her profoundly disabled. Peter felt "she hardly existed as a person at all." His daughter was one of the ones who influenced him in his writing. -
“The National Health” won an Evening Standard award when it was presented in 1969 by the National Theater.
“The National Health” is almost a documentary about hospitals and hospitalization. -
Peter Nichols studied acting at the Bristol old Vic theater school and was educated at Bristol Grammer School. -
Nicholas had a long history of success in British theater, from Death of Joe Egg in 1967 to Passion Play in 1981. He had the ability to produce powerful drama for the general public based on personal experience.
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Three of his plays were made into feature films, all with screenplays by Mr. Nichols: “A Day in the Death of Joe Egg” in 1972, with a cast led by Alan Bates; “The National Health” in 1973, starring Lynn Redgrave; and “Privates on Parade,” directed by Mr. Blakemore, in 1983.
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Though many of his early pieces were successfully recreated on Broadway and in London ("Joe Egg" was nominated for a Tony Award for best revival in 2003 and won a Tony for best revival in 1985.)
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Peter Nichols died on September 7, 2019, at the age of 92 in Oxford United Kingdom. -
Before Peter became a full-time writer he had held a 100-ton USCG Ocean operators license and was a professional yacht delivery captain for 10 years.
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"Most of his plays, by his own admission, were partly autobiographical."
This quote suggests that Nichols drew inspiration from his own life experiences when writing his plays. -