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Peter Barnes (10 January 1931 – 1 July 2004)[1] was an English Olivier Award-winning playwright and screenwriter. His best known work is the play The Ruling Class, which was made into a 1972 film for which Peter O'Toole received an Oscar nomination.[2]
Barnes was educated at Marling School in Stroud, Gloucestershire and performed his national service with the Royal Air Force. He then worked briefly for London County Council.[3]
Bored with his job, Barnes took a correspondence course in theology and began to visit the British Museum Reading Room, which he used as an office on a daily basis.[4] During this period he worked as a film critic, story editor, and a screenwriter.[5] He achieved critical and box-office success with his baroque comedy The Ruling Class (1968), which debuted at the Nottingham Playhouse.[6] The play was notorious for its anti-naturalistic approach, unusual in theatre at the time.[7] Critic Harold Hobson deemed it to be one of the best first plays of its generation.[4] Following a successful three-month run in the West End, Barnes adapted the play for the 1972 film of the same name, which featured a highly acclaimed performance by Peter O'Toole.[8]
Following his initial success, Barnes wrote a series of plays offering apocalyptic visions of various periods in history:
In his later years Barnes turned his attention more in the direction of films, radio, and television.[11] His screenplay for Elizabeth von Arnim's The Enchanted April earned him a nomination for the best adapted screenplay Oscar in 1992.[13] He also wrote several hugely successful mini-series for U.S. television, including Arabian Nights, Merlin and Noah's Ark.[14] For BBC Radio 3 he wrote a series of monologues entitled Barnes's People, for which he attracted a large number of well known actors: Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, Alec Guinness, Peggy Ashcroft, Judi Dench, and Ian McKellen.[15] His television miniseries for ABC and NBC were the most popular of the day with record audiences.[16]
Barnes continued writing historical comedies throughout the 1990s. These include Sunsets and Glories (1990), Dreaming (1999) which transferred to London's West End, and Jubilee (2001).[17][4] He was the Royal Shakespeare Company's most produced living playwright at the time.[18]
The last play that Barnes completed was Babies, which is based on his experiences as an elderly father.[3] His second wife gave birth to a daughter when he was 69, followed by triplets a year later.[19]
John Irvin directed his The Moon and the Stars with Alfred Molina about the film business in 1930s' Rome.[20] A revival of his Noonday Demons was produced by renowned theatre designer John Napier.[21] Barnes television miniseries are shown yearly as holiday favourites.
Barnes, who had two sons and two daughters, married twice – in 1958 to Charlotte Beck and in 1995 to Christie Horn.[1] His second wife, Christie, gave birth to his first daughter Leela in 2000 when he was 69.[8] Barnes, who received much American mainstream media attention for his movies and US television miniseries in later life, quickly became a tabloid obsession in 2002 when he became a father again at the age of 71.[22] His wife gave birth this time to triplets Abigail, Nathaniel and Zachary.[4] Barnes died of a stroke on 1 July 2004.[19]
