Guthrie's sister, Susan Margaret, married his close university friend, fellow Anglo-Irishman Hubert Butler.

This led to a year directing for the stage with the Scottish National Players, before returning to the BBC to become one of the first writers to create plays designed for radio performance.

[6] While in Montreal, Guthrie produced the Romance of Canada series of radio plays for recalling epic moments in Canadian history.

He also returned to Scotland where, with James Bridie in 1948, he staged the first modern adaptation, by Robert Kemp, of Sir David Lyndsay's grand-scale medieval comedy Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis for the Second Edinburgh International Festival; a landmark event in the modern revival of Scottish theatre.

[10] Intrigued with the idea of starting a Shakespeare theatre in a remote Canadian location, he enlisted Tanya Moiseiwitsch to further develop his thrust stage design, successfully improvised in Edinburgh, and actors Alec Guinness and Irene Worth to star in the inaugural production of Richard III.

In 1962, as soon as the Gilbert and Sullivan copyrights expired, he brought these productions to Britain; they soon played at Her Majesty's Theatre and were broadcast by the BBC.

He published a small invitation in 1959 in the drama page of The New York Times soliciting communities' interest and involvement in a resident theater.

[16] Sir Peter Hall wrote, "Among the great originators in British Theatre...Guthrie was a towering figure in every sense.

He was knighted in 1961, and died a decade later at his home, Annaghmakerrig, in Newbliss, County Monaghan, Ireland, aged 70, from a heart attack.