Robin Chapman

Robin John Chapman (born 18 January 1933 in Croydon, Surrey, England, UK) is an English novelist, playwright and screenwriter.

Biography

Chapman began his career as an actor at Cambridge (he played Hamlet in the ADC's centenary production and was president of the Marlowe Society) before holding a spear at Stratford-Upon-Avon, working in repertory, then joined Joan Littlewood’s revolutionary Theatre Workshop, where he turned to writing.

Among Chapman's stage plays are High Street China, Guests and One of Us.

Chapman's television plays have won awards from the Mystery Writers of America and the Writers Guild, as well as a BAFTA nomination.

Chapman has enjoyed a long career in television, favoured by Granada TV during its early days. His best known work includes Spindoe (1968), the controversial Big Breadwinner Hog (1969) and many adaptations, including M. R. James' Lost Hearts, Jane Eyre, Eyeless in Gaza and a considerable number of screenplays on Roald Dahl's short stories for Tales of the Unexpected. Single plays for television include two entries in Play for Today and Blunt (1987), all three presented by BBC TV.

Chapman edited, with an introduction, The City and the Court, a collection of five Jacobean era comedies.

His published novels are:

  • A Waste of Public Money
  • My Vision's Enemy
  • Big Breadwinner Hog
  • Christoferus
  • Wartimes (two novellas in one volume)
  • The Secret of the World
  • The Spanish Trilogy
    • The Duchess's Diary (1980)
    • Sancho's Golden Age
    • Pasamonte's Life
  • Shakespeare's Don Quixote (2011)
  • Throwing Pigeons out of Aeroplanes (2016)

The Spanish Trilogy extends the lives and experiences of characters found in Miguel de Cervantes' early 17th century novel Don Quixote. The first book of the trilogy, The Duchess’s Diary, was positively reviewed.[1] Noted Cervantes scholar E.C. Riley,[2] writing a 1980 review in The Times Literary Supplement, called it "a truer understanding of Cervantes than twenty books of criticism."[3]

Shakespeare's Don Quixote is a narrative dialogue featuring Shakespeare, John Fletcher and Cervantes, as they talk amongst themselves while watching "actors" Don Quixote and Sancho Panza performing a present-day fringe theatre production of the Shakespeare-Fletcher lost play The History of Cardenio, about Cervantes' teenaged character in Don Quixote.[4]

References
  1. Conant, Oliver (1985) "HOSTESS TO CERVANTES", The New York Times, 17 March 1985, retrieved 2011-07-12
  2. compiled by Jeremy Robbins and Daniel Eisenberg (2002). "Publications of E. C. Riley" (PDF). Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America. 2002 (1): 17–26. Retrieved 2020-07-01.
  3. Riley, E.C. (1980-02-29). "Cervantine Succession". The Times Literary Supplement (4014): 238. ISSN 0307-661X. Retrieved 2020-07-01.
  4. "BOOK NOW PUBLISHING: Shakespeare's Don Quixote". booknowpublishing.com. Retrieved 2020-07-02.
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