Frayn's novels, such as Towards the End of the Morning, Headlong and Spies, have also been critical and commercial successes, making him one of the handful of writers in the English language to succeed in both drama and prose fiction.

Violet was the daughter of a failed palliasse merchant; having studied as a violinist at the Royal Academy of Music, she worked as a shop assistant and occasional clothes model at Harrods.

He then worked as a reporter and columnist for The Guardian and The Observer, where he established a reputation as a satirist and comic writer, and began publishing his plays and novels.

Frayn's columns for The Guardian and The Observer (collected in At Bay in Gear Street, The Day of the Dog, The Book of Fub and On the Outskirts) are models of the comic essay; in the 1980s a number of them were adapted and performed for BBC Radio 4 by Martin Jarvis.

From four of Chekhov's short stories and four of his one-act plays Frayn devised The Sneeze (originally performed on the West End by Rowan Atkinson).

Frayn has three daughters with his first wife, Gillian Palmer: Rebecca, a documentary film maker, writer and actress; Susanna; and Jenny, a television producer.