Christopher Fry

[3] While still young, he took his mother's maiden name because, on very tenuous grounds, he believed her to be related to the 19th-century Quaker prison reformer Elizabeth Fry.

[5] Fry gave up his school career in 1932 to found the Tunbridge Wells Repertory Players, which he ran for three years, directing and starring in the English premiere of George Bernard Shaw’s A Village Wooing in 1934.

His play about Dr. Thomas John Barnardo, the founder of children's homes, toured in a fund-raising amateur production in 1935 and 1936, including Deborah Kerr in its cast.

A pacifist, he was a conscientious objector during World War II, and served in the Non-Combatant Corps; for part of the time he cleaned London's sewers.

The plot is that of Egypt in the throes of a threatening conflict between master and slave, with Moses denouncing his privileges as an Egyptian-reared soldier and finding new responsibility as a leader of his people.

Due to its success, it transferred to the West End for a nine-month run, starring John Gielgud and featuring Richard Burton and Claire Bloom among the cast.

[6] In 1950, Fry adapted a translation of Jean Anouilh’s Invitation to the Castle as Ring Round the Moon for director Peter Brook.

A Sleep of Prisoners followed in 1951, first performed at St Thomas' church in Regent Street, London, in 1951 and later touring with Denholm Elliott and Stanley Baker.

Although Fry lived until 2005, his poetic style of drama began to fall out of fashion with the advent of the Angry Young Men of British theatre in the mid-1950s.

Despite working mainly for the cinema in the 1960s, he continued to write plays, including Curtmantle for the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1962, and A Yard of Sun – the fourth in his seasonal quartet – at the Nottingham Playhouse in 1970.

During the next ten years, he concentrated on further translations, including Henrik Ibsen’s Peer Gynt and Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac which were produced at the Chichester Festival Theatre.

In 2008, it was revived again, directed by Sean Mathias, once again starring Angela Thorne, graduating from the role of young Diana to the wheelchair-using Madame Desmortes.

Fry collaborated with Denis Cannan on a screenplay for the film version of John Gay’s The Beggar's Opera (1953), for director Peter Brook, starring Laurence Olivier.

His television movie scripts are The Canary (1950), The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1968), The Brontës of Haworth (1973), The Best of Enemies (1976), Sister Dora (1977), and Star Over Bethlehem (1981).

Christopher Fry at a rehearsal of a revival of A Sleep of Prisoners by the Next Stage Company, Holy Trinity Church, Sloane Square, Nov. 1987