A dozen years after his death at only 48 the Giles Cooper Awards for Radio Drama were instituted in his honour, jointly by the BBC and the publishers Eyre Methuen.

His early successes included radio dramatisations of Dickens' Oliver Twist, William Golding's Lord of the Flies and John Wyndham's science fiction novel Day of the Triffids.

He also adapted four Sherlock Holmes stories, Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls (1965), Les Misérables, Flaubert's Madame Bovary and Evelyn Waugh's trilogy of novels Sword of Honour (1967) for Theatre 625.

His last play was Happy Family was first presented at the Hampstead Theatre in 1966 starring Wendy Craig; it then transferred to the West End with Michael Denison, Dulcie Gray and Robert Flemyng.

A revival in 1984 directed by Maria Aitken opened in Windsor and transferred to the Duke of York's Theatre in the West End, starring Ian Ogilvy, Angela Thorne, James Laurenson and Stephanie Beacham.

Cooper died at the age of 48 after falling from a train as it passed through Surbiton, Surrey, returning from a Guild of Dramatists' Christmas dinner at the Garrick on 2 December 1966.

[6] Cooper's family have always strongly disputed this, not only because it bears no relationship to the playwright's apparent frame of mind during the period leading up to his death, but also because it unfairly colours appraisal of his work from an academic standpoint.