CHARLES WOOD

(6 August 1932 - 1 February 2020)

The British playwright and screenwriter Charles Wood, who has died aged 87, was first a professional soldier from the age of eighteen with a keen interest in military history, a subject he often drew upon for his plays and film scripts. Even with his interest in matters military, his writing often took an anti-war stance. His parents were touring actors and Wood, although he trained as a graphics artist, began working backstage in the theatre, and also as a journalist and in advertising before writing for the theatre. In the 1960s he worked with Peter Brook at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre and also at the National, and later on at the Royal Court. He started writing for television in 1961 and wrote his first film in 1965, an adaptation of Ann Jellicoe’s play The Knack... And How to Get It, the first of many collaborations with director Richard Lester. It starred Rita Tushingham, Ray Brooks and Michael Crawford. Help! followed, again with Lester and The Beatles. Then there was Wood’s adaptation of Patrick Ryan’s novel How I Won the War with Michael Crawford and John Lennon, also for Lester. He wrote The Charge of the Light Brigade for director Tony Richardson, and then A Long Day’s Dying for Peter Collinson, with David Hemmings and Tom Bell. He was back with Lester for The Bed Sitting Room, an adaptation of Spike Milligan and John Antrobus’s play. It starred Rita Tushingham, Dudley Moore, Harry Secombe and a host of British actors, plus Milligan. After that Wood mainly wrote for television before working with Lester again on Cuba, with Sean Connery as a British mercenary fighting Castro’s guerrillas. Wagner was a TV miniseries written for Tony Palmer who also directed Wood’s script for Puccini, with Robert Stephens, and England, My England, a portrait of composer Henry Purcell, with Simon Callow. My Family and Other Animals was a TV series about the naturalist Gerald Durrell. War themes surfaced in Wood’s TV work on Richard Eyre’s Tumbledown with Colin Firth, Sharpe’s Company and its several sequels with Sean Bean, and A Breed of Heroes with Samuel West. He also contributed to Inspector Morse, Kavanagh Q.C. and Monsignor Renard, all three starring John Thaw. The other films Wood wrote were An Awfully Big Adventure, from the Beryl Bainbridge novel, with Alan Rickman and Hugh Grant, and Iris, a biopic of the novelist Iris Murdoch with Judi Dench. His last screenplay was a 2008 collaboration - again with director Richard Eyre - for The Other Man with Liam Neeson and Antonio Banderas. Charles Wood was married to the actress Valerie Newman. They had a son, John, who predeceased Charles, and a daughter, Kate.

MICHAEL DARVELL