Hugh Whitemore
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hugh Whitemore is an English playwright and screenwriter born in 1936.[1]
Whitemore studied for the stage at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, where he is now a Member of the Council. He began his writing career in British television with both original teleplays and adaptations of classic works by Charles Dickens, W. Somerset Maugham, Daphne du Maurier, and Charlotte Brontë, among others, and twice won a Writers' Guild of Great Britain award. His work for American TV includes Concealed Enemies, about the Alger Hiss case, and The Gathering Storm, which focused on a troubled period in the marriage of Clementine and Winston Churchill just prior to World War II. He won an Emmy Award for each. He also was nominated for his adaptation of the Carl Bernstein/Bob Woodward book about President Nixon, The Final Days. His most recent teleplay was My House in Umbria (2003), an adaptation of the novella by William Trevor starring Maggie Smith.
Whitemore's film credits include All Creatures Great and Small (1975), The Blue Bird (1976), The Return of the Soldier (1982), 84 Charing Cross Road (1987), and Utz (1992).
The plots of Whitmore's plays frequently focus on historical figures. Stevie (1977) centered on the life of English poet and novelist Stevie Smith; Pack of Lies (1983) covered events leading up to the arrest of the Krogers, two Americans spying for the Russians, in London in 1961; Breaking the Code (1986) centered on Alan Turing, who cracked the German Enigma code during World War II and shattered the English code of sexual discretion with his homosexuality, for which he was charged with gross indecency; and The Best of Friends (1987), about the friendship Dame Laurentia McLachlan, the Abbess of Stanbrook Abbey in Worcestershire, shared with George Bernard Shaw and Sydney Cockerell, director of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. His most recent was As You Desire Me, a 2005 adaptation of a play by Luigi Pirandello.
Whitemore is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
