David Pownall FRSL (19 May 1938 – 21 November 2022) was a British playwright and prolific radio dramatist performed internationally, and novelist translated into several languages.
[citation needed] In 1963, Pownall moved to Zambia to take up a post as the personnel manager at Anglo American PLC and lived and worked there until 1969; he had several early plays produced there.
[citation needed] Returning to England to write full-time, he became the resident writer of the Century Theatre touring group, from 1970-72.
Being deeply interested in music, he wrote several plays related to the challenges of composers, both in terms of personal creativity, and, in Master Class (1983), working within the oppressive political environment of the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin.
[3] As a novelist, Pownall's early work, such as The Raining Tree War (1974) and its sequel African Horse (1975) were comic novels in the mode of Evelyn Waugh.