Giles Cooper
Encyclopedia
Giles Stannus Cooper was an Anglo-Irish playwright and prolific radio drama
tist, writing over sixty scripts for BBC radio
and television. He was awarded the OBE in 1960 for "Services to Broadcasting". A dozen years after his death at only 48 the Giles Cooper Awards for Radio Drama were instituted in his honour, jointly by the BBC and the publishers Eyre Methuen.
near Dublin on 9th August 1918, the son of a Royal Navy
Commander, Guy Edward Cooper, and the nephew of the politician and writer Bryan Ricco Cooper. He was educated at the prep school Arnold House, St John's Wood, London, at Lancing College
on the South Downs, and later studied languages in Grenoble
in the French Alps
and at a language school at San Sebastian in Northern Spain. It was here, with the Spanish Civil War
raging around him, that he was shot through the arm one evening by a sniper's bullet, while on a mission to purchase cigarettes before dinner. The Royal Navy subsequently came to his rescue, gave him medical attention and dropped him off across the French border at St. Jean de Luz.
His father had planned the life of a diplomat for him, in which a Cambridge degree in Law and a Call to the Bar were prerequisites. Cooper, however, confounded these plans by enrolling as an actor at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art
in London. A contemporary, joining on the same morning was the actor Michael Denison
who recalls their first meeting in his autobiography Overture & Beginners. Cooper's studies were interrupted by the Second World War. Initially conscripted into the ranks, he was selected for training at the Royal Military College
Sandhurst, gained a commission and was subsequently despatched to the Far East in 1942. He served as an infantry officer in the West Yorkshire Regiment, spending three grueling years in the jungles of Burma fighting the Japanese, on occasion hand-to-hand.
After the war he worked as an actor, first at the Arts Theatre
under Alec Clunes
, where he met his future wife, the actress Gwyneth Lewis. Seasons in repertory theatre at Newquay (with Kenneth Williams
) at the Connaught Theatre, Worthing (with Harold Pinter
) and at the Regent's Park Open Air Theatre continued until 1952 when he turned to script editing and then full-time writing.
, William Golding
's Lord of the Flies
and John Wyndham
's classic science fiction novel Day of the Triffids. Wyndham wrote him a congratulatory letter after the first broadcast. On television he adapted Simenon's Maigret
detective novels from the French, which became the major hit of the day (1960–61) starring Rupert Davies
as the pipe-smoking sleuth in over 24 episodes. For this he won the Script award in 1961 of the Guild of Television Producers, which subsequently became BAFTA. Cooper also adapted four Sherlock Holmes
stories, Ernest Hemingway
's For Whom the Bell Tolls
(1965), Les Misérables
, Flaubert's Madame Bovary
and Evelyn Waugh
's Sword of Honour
(1967). He was also successful in the theatre, his first love, with his own plays. His first full-length play Never Get Out was staged at the Edinburgh Festival in 1950 and transferred to the Gate Theatre
in London.
The first of his radio plays to make his reputation was Mathry Beacon (1956) about a small detachment of men and women still guarding a Top Secret "missile deflector" somewhere in Wales, years after the war has ended. (The first and only American production, starring Martyn Green
, was syndicated to public stations in 1981 by the National Radio Theater
of Chicago.) Also of note are Unman, Wittering and Zigo
(1958) in which a young teacher finds his predecessor has been murdered by the boys in his class) and The Long House (1965). "Out of the Crocodile" ran at the Phoenix Theatre in 1963-64 starring Kenneth More
, Celia Johnson
and Cyril Raymond
. "The Spies are Singing" was presented at the Nottingham Playhouse
in 1966.
Many of his plays were later adapted for both stage and television. Unman, Wittering and Zigo
, Seek Her Out (in which Toby Robins
witness an assassination on the London Underground
and becomes the next would-be victims of the perpetrators) and The Long House formed a trilogy in broadcast on Theatre 625
on BBC2. He also wrote The Other Man
a television drama starring Michael Caine
, Siân Phillips
and John Thaw
and first broadcast on ITV
in 1964.
Everything In The Garden
was first performed by The Royal Shakespeare Company in 1962 at the Arts Theatre, London, an American adaptation by Edward Albee
, dedicated to the memory of Giles Cooper, was first performed in 1967 at the Plymouth Theatre, New York
.
His last play was Happy Family which was first presented at the Hampstead Theatre
in 1966 starring Wendy Craig
, it then transferred to the West End
with Michael Denison
, Dulcie Gray
and Robert Flemyng
. A revival in 1984 directed by Maria Aitken
, opened at Windsor and transferred to the Duke of York's theatre in the West End, starring Ian Ogilvy
, Angela Thorne
, James Laurenson
and Stephanie Beacham
.
, Surrey
, returning from a Guild of Dramatist's Christmas dinner at the Garrick
on 2 December 1966. A post-mortem showed he had consumed the equivalent of half a bottle of whisky and the coroner at Kingston in January 1967 returned a verdict of misadventure. There have been several attempts to attribute his death to suicide, notably by The Stage
, the theatre newspaper; and Nest Cleverdon, widow of Douglas Cleverdon
, told Humphrey Carpenter
when interviewed by him in 1995 that she believed it was suicide. Cooper's family, understandably perhaps, have always strongly refuted this, not only because it bears no relationship to the playwright's apparent frame of mind during the period leading up to his death, but because it unfairly colours appraisal of his work from an academic standpoint.
for radio drama were established by the BBC in conjunction with the publishers Eyre Methuen, and until their discontinuation under Birtist belt-tightening in the early 1990s, were awarded to a plethora of writing talent, including Tom Stoppard
, Harold Pinter
, Anthony Minghella
, Fay Weldon
, Joanna Trollope
and William Trevor
.
Radio drama
Radio drama is a dramatized, purely acoustic performance, broadcast on radio or published on audio media, such as tape or CD. With no visual component, radio drama depends on dialogue, music and sound effects to help the listener imagine the characters and story...
tist, writing over sixty scripts for BBC radio
BBC Radio
BBC Radio is a service of the British Broadcasting Corporation which has operated in the United Kingdom under the terms of a Royal Charter since 1927. For a history of BBC radio prior to 1927 see British Broadcasting Company...
and television. He was awarded the OBE in 1960 for "Services to Broadcasting". A dozen years after his death at only 48 the Giles Cooper Awards for Radio Drama were instituted in his honour, jointly by the BBC and the publishers Eyre Methuen.
Early life
Giles Cooper was born into a landed Anglo-Irish family at CarrickminesCarrickmines
Carrickmines is suburb of Dublin in Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown, Ireland. Traditionally a location for large expensive houses, being situated just south of Foxrock. The area is now divided north/south by the M50 motorway and its associated Junction 15...
near Dublin on 9th August 1918, the son of a Royal Navy
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...
Commander, Guy Edward Cooper, and the nephew of the politician and writer Bryan Ricco Cooper. He was educated at the prep school Arnold House, St John's Wood, London, at Lancing College
Lancing College
Lancing College is a co-educational English independent school in the British public school tradition, founded in 1848 by Nathaniel Woodard. Woodard's aim was to provide education "based on sound principle and sound knowledge, firmly grounded in the Christian faith." Lancing was the first of a...
on the South Downs, and later studied languages in Grenoble
Grenoble
Grenoble is a city in southeastern France, at the foot of the French Alps where the river Drac joins the Isère. Located in the Rhône-Alpes region, Grenoble is the capital of the department of Isère...
in the French Alps
French Alps
The French Alps are those portions of the Alps mountain range which stand within France, located in the Rhône-Alpes and Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur regions....
and at a language school at San Sebastian in Northern Spain. It was here, with the Spanish Civil War
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
raging around him, that he was shot through the arm one evening by a sniper's bullet, while on a mission to purchase cigarettes before dinner. The Royal Navy subsequently came to his rescue, gave him medical attention and dropped him off across the French border at St. Jean de Luz.
His father had planned the life of a diplomat for him, in which a Cambridge degree in Law and a Call to the Bar were prerequisites. Cooper, however, confounded these plans by enrolling as an actor at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art
Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art
The Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art, formerly the Webber Douglas School of Singing and Dramatic Art, was a drama school, and originally a singing school, in London. It was one of the leading drama schools in Britain, and offered comprehensive training for those intending to pursue a...
in London. A contemporary, joining on the same morning was the actor Michael Denison
Michael Denison
John Michael Terence Wellesley Denison CBE was an English actor.-Background:Denison was born in Doncaster, South Yorkshire in 1915. He was raised by his aunt and uncle from the age of three weeks, following the death of his mother and his estrangement from his father. He was educated at Harrow...
who recalls their first meeting in his autobiography Overture & Beginners. Cooper's studies were interrupted by the Second World War. Initially conscripted into the ranks, he was selected for training at the Royal Military College
Royal Military College
The Royal Military College can refer to:* Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Ontario, Canada* Royal Military College Saint-Jean in Saint-Jean, Quebec, Canada* Royal Military College, Duntroon in Campbell, Australian Capital Territory, Australia...
Sandhurst, gained a commission and was subsequently despatched to the Far East in 1942. He served as an infantry officer in the West Yorkshire Regiment, spending three grueling years in the jungles of Burma fighting the Japanese, on occasion hand-to-hand.
After the war he worked as an actor, first at the Arts Theatre
Arts Theatre
The Arts Theatre is a theatre in Great Newport Street, in Westminster, Central London. It now operates as the West End's smallest commercial receiving house.-History:...
under Alec Clunes
Alec Clunes
Alexander "Alec" Demoro Sherriff Clunes was an English actor and stage manager.Among the plays he presented were Christopher Fry's famous play The Lady's Not For Burning. He gave the actor and dramatist Sir Peter Ustinov his first break with his production The House of Regrets. His film career was...
, where he met his future wife, the actress Gwyneth Lewis. Seasons in repertory theatre at Newquay (with Kenneth Williams
Kenneth Williams
Kenneth Charles Williams was an English comic actor and comedian. He was one of the main ensemble in 26 of the Carry On films, and appeared in numerous British television shows, and radio comedies with Tony Hancock and Kenneth Horne.-Life and career:Kenneth Charles Williams was born on 22 February...
) at the Connaught Theatre, Worthing (with Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter, CH, CBE was a Nobel Prize–winning English playwright and screenwriter. One of the most influential modern British dramatists, his writing career spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party , The Homecoming , and Betrayal , each of which he adapted to...
) and at the Regent's Park Open Air Theatre continued until 1952 when he turned to script editing and then full-time writing.
Writing
Cooper was a pioneer in writing for the broadcast media, becoming prolific in both radio and television drama. His early successes included radio dramatisations of Dickens' Oliver TwistOliver Twist
Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy's Progress is the second novel by English author Charles Dickens, published by Richard Bentley in 1838. The story is about an orphan Oliver Twist, who endures a miserable existence in a workhouse and then is placed with an undertaker. He escapes and travels to...
, William Golding
William Golding
Sir William Gerald Golding was a British novelist, poet, playwright and Nobel Prize for Literature laureate, best known for his novel Lord of the Flies...
's Lord of the Flies
Lord of the Flies
Lord of the Flies is a novel by Nobel Prize-winning author William Golding about a group of British boys stuck on a deserted island who try to govern themselves, with disastrous results...
and John Wyndham
John Wyndham
John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris was an English science fiction writer who usually used the pen name John Wyndham, although he also used other combinations of his names, such as John Beynon and Lucas Parkes...
's classic science fiction novel Day of the Triffids. Wyndham wrote him a congratulatory letter after the first broadcast. On television he adapted Simenon's Maigret
Maigret
Jules Maigret, Maigret to most people, including his wife, is a fictional police detective, actually a commissaire or commissioner of the Paris "Brigade Criminelle" , created by writer Georges Simenon.Seventy-five novels and twenty-eight short stories about Maigret were published between 1931 and...
detective novels from the French, which became the major hit of the day (1960–61) starring Rupert Davies
Rupert Davies
Rupert Davies was a British actor. He remains best known for playing the title role in the BBC's 1960s television adaptation of Maigret, based on the Maigret novels written by Georges Simenon....
as the pipe-smoking sleuth in over 24 episodes. For this he won the Script award in 1961 of the Guild of Television Producers, which subsequently became BAFTA. Cooper also adapted four Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective created by Scottish author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The fantastic London-based "consulting detective", Holmes is famous for his astute logical reasoning, his ability to take almost any disguise, and his use of forensic science skills to solve...
stories, Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
's For Whom the Bell Tolls
For Whom the Bell Tolls (1965 film)
For Whom the Bell Tolls was a 1965 TV film produced by the BBC and based on the novel by Ernest Hemingway. It stars John Ronane, Ann Bell, Julian Curry, Glynn Edwards and Joan Miller. The film was adapted for television by Giles Cooper and was directed by Rex Tucker. It consisted of four...
(1965), Les Misérables
Les Misérables
Les Misérables , translated variously from the French as The Miserable Ones, The Wretched, The Poor Ones, The Wretched Poor, or The Victims), is an 1862 French novel by author Victor Hugo and is widely considered one of the greatest novels of the nineteenth century...
, Flaubert's Madame Bovary
Madame Bovary
Madame Bovary is Gustave Flaubert's first published novel and is considered his masterpiece. The story focuses on a doctor's wife, Emma Bovary, who has adulterous affairs and lives beyond her means in order to escape the banalities and emptiness of provincial life...
and Evelyn Waugh
Evelyn Waugh
Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh , known as Evelyn Waugh, was an English writer of novels, travel books and biographies. He was also a prolific journalist and reviewer...
's Sword of Honour
Sword of Honour
The Sword of Honour trilogy by Evelyn Waugh is his look at the Second World War. It consists of three novels, Men at Arms , Officers and Gentlemen and Unconditional Surrender , which loosely parallel his wartime experiences...
(1967). He was also successful in the theatre, his first love, with his own plays. His first full-length play Never Get Out was staged at the Edinburgh Festival in 1950 and transferred to the Gate Theatre
Gate Theatre
The Gate Theatre, in Dublin, was founded in 1928 by Hilton Edwards and Micheál Mac Liammóir, initially using the Abbey Theatre's Peacock studio theatre space to stage important works by European and American dramatists...
in London.
The first of his radio plays to make his reputation was Mathry Beacon (1956) about a small detachment of men and women still guarding a Top Secret "missile deflector" somewhere in Wales, years after the war has ended. (The first and only American production, starring Martyn Green
Martyn Green
William Martyn-Green , better known as Martyn Green, was an English actor and singer. He is best known for his work as principal comedian in the Gilbert & Sullivan comic operas, which he performed and recorded with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company and other troupes.After army service in World War I,...
, was syndicated to public stations in 1981 by the National Radio Theater
National Radio Theater
The National Radio Theater was a non-profit independent producer of radio plays created in Chicago by Yuri Rasovsky and Michelle M. Faith. Long affiliated with classical FM station WFMT, NRT was active from January 1973 to April 1986. Its programs were heard primarily over public radio stations...
of Chicago.) Also of note are Unman, Wittering and Zigo
Unman, Wittering and Zigo
Unman, Wittering and Zigo is a 1958 radio play by the Anglo-Irish playwright Giles Cooper.-Plot:The play is a thriller set in a traditional boys boarding school where a senior form master has just been killed in a tragic accident. The main character is John Ebony, a teacher in his first job,...
(1958) in which a young teacher finds his predecessor has been murdered by the boys in his class) and The Long House (1965). "Out of the Crocodile" ran at the Phoenix Theatre in 1963-64 starring Kenneth More
Kenneth More
Kenneth Gilbert More CBE was a highly successful English film actor during the post-World War II era and starred in many feature films, often in the role of an archetypal carefree and happy-go-lucky middle-class gentleman.-Early life:Kenneth More was born in Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire, the...
, Celia Johnson
Celia Johnson
Dame Celia Elizabeth Johnson DBE was an English actress.She began her stage acting career in 1928, and subsequently achieved success in West End and Broadway productions. She also appeared in several films, including the romantic drama Brief Encounter , for which she received a nomination for the...
and Cyril Raymond
Cyril Raymond
Cyril William North Raymond MBE was a British character actor....
. "The Spies are Singing" was presented at the Nottingham Playhouse
Nottingham Playhouse
The Nottingham Playhouse is a theatre in Nottingham, England. It was first established as a repertory theatre in the 1950s when it operated from a former cinema. Directors during this period included Val May and Frank Dunlop.-The building:...
in 1966.
Many of his plays were later adapted for both stage and television. Unman, Wittering and Zigo
Unman, Wittering and Zigo
Unman, Wittering and Zigo is a 1958 radio play by the Anglo-Irish playwright Giles Cooper.-Plot:The play is a thriller set in a traditional boys boarding school where a senior form master has just been killed in a tragic accident. The main character is John Ebony, a teacher in his first job,...
, Seek Her Out (in which Toby Robins
Toby Robins
Toby Robins was a Canadian actress of film, stage and television.Toby Robins starred in hundreds of radio and stage productions in Canada from the late 1940s through the 1960s, working with such stars as Jane Mallett, Barry Morse, John Drainie, Ruth Springford, James Doohan, and many others...
witness an assassination on the London Underground
London Underground
The London Underground is a rapid transit system serving a large part of Greater London and some parts of Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Essex in England...
and becomes the next would-be victims of the perpetrators) and The Long House formed a trilogy in broadcast on Theatre 625
Theatre 625
Theatre 625 is a British television drama anthology series, produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC2 from 1964 to 1968. It was one of the first regular programmes in the line-up of the channel, and the title referred to its production and transmission being in the higher-definition 625-line...
on BBC2. He also wrote The Other Man
The Other Man (1964 TV programme)
The Other Man is a British television drama written by Giles Cooper and directed by Gordon Flemyng, starring Michael Caine, Siân Phillips and John Thaw...
a television drama starring Michael Caine
Michael Caine
Sir Michael Caine, CBE is an English actor. He won Academy Awards for best supporting actor in both Hannah and Her Sisters and The Cider House Rules ....
, Siân Phillips
Siân Phillips
Jane Elizabeth Ailwên "Siân" Phillips, CBE, is a Welsh actress.-Early life:Phillips was born in Gwaun-Cae-Gurwen, Neath Port Talbot, Wales, the daughter of Sally , a teacher, and David Phillips, a steelworker-turned-policeman...
and John Thaw
John Thaw
John Edward Thaw, CBE was an English actor, who appeared in a range of television, stage and cinema roles, his most popular being police and legal dramas such as Redcap, The Sweeney, Inspector Morse and Kavanagh QC.-Early life:Thaw came from a working class background, having been born in Gorton,...
and first broadcast on ITV
ITV
ITV is the major commercial public service TV network in the United Kingdom. Launched in 1955 under the auspices of the Independent Television Authority to provide competition to the BBC, it is also the oldest commercial network in the UK...
in 1964.
Everything In The Garden
Everything In The Garden
Everything in the Garden is a play by Giles Cooper, first produced by The Royal Shakespeare Company on 13 March 1962 at the Arts Theatre, London....
was first performed by The Royal Shakespeare Company in 1962 at the Arts Theatre, London, an American adaptation by Edward Albee
Edward Albee
Edward Franklin Albee III is an American playwright who is best known for The Zoo Story , The Sandbox , Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? , and a rewrite of the screenplay for the unsuccessful musical version of Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's . His works are considered well-crafted, often...
, dedicated to the memory of Giles Cooper, was first performed in 1967 at the Plymouth Theatre, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
.
His last play was Happy Family which was first presented at the Hampstead Theatre
Hampstead Theatre
Hampstead Theatre is a theatre in the vicinity of Swiss Cottage and Belsize Park, in the London Borough of Camden. It specialises in commissioning and producing new writing, supporting and developing the work of new writers. In 2009 it celebrates its 50 year anniversary.The original theatre was...
in 1966 starring Wendy Craig
Wendy Craig
Wendy Craig is a BAFTA Award winning English actress who is best known for her appearances in the sitcoms Butterflies, ...And Mother Makes Three and ...And Mother Makes Five...
, it then transferred to the West End
West End theatre
West End theatre is a popular term for mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres of London's 'Theatreland', the West End. Along with New York's Broadway theatre, West End theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English speaking...
with Michael Denison
Michael Denison
John Michael Terence Wellesley Denison CBE was an English actor.-Background:Denison was born in Doncaster, South Yorkshire in 1915. He was raised by his aunt and uncle from the age of three weeks, following the death of his mother and his estrangement from his father. He was educated at Harrow...
, Dulcie Gray
Dulcie Gray
Dulcie Gray, CBE was a British singer and actress of stage, screen and television, a mystery writer and lepidopterist.-Early life and career:...
and Robert Flemyng
Robert Flemyng
Robert Flemyng OBE, MC was a British film and stage actor.Flemyng was born in Liverpool, the son of a doctor, and was educated at Haileybury. He began his career as a medical student before abandoning medicine to become an actor. Flemyng made his stage debut in the early 1930s, and worked steadily...
. A revival in 1984 directed by Maria Aitken
Maria Aitken
Maria Penelope Katharine Aitken is an English actress, writer, producer and director.Aitken was born in Dublin, the daughter of Sir William Aitken, a Conservative MP, and socialite Penelope Aitken, whose father was John Maffey, 1st Baron Rugby. She is a great-niece of newspaper magnate and...
, opened at Windsor and transferred to the Duke of York's theatre in the West End, starring Ian Ogilvy
Ian Ogilvy
Ian Raymond Ogilvy is an English film and television actor.-Early life:He was born in Woking, Surrey, England, the son of advertising executive Francis Ogilvy and actress Aileen Raymond .He was educated at Sunningdale School, Eton College and at the Royal Academy of...
, Angela Thorne
Angela Thorne
Angela Thorne is an English actress who is best known for her roles in To the Manor Born and Anyone for Denis?-Early life:Angela Thorne was born in Karachi, British India, , in 1939...
, James Laurenson
James Laurenson
James Laurenson is a New Zealand actor, who has performed many classical roles on stage and television.Laurenson was born in Marton, New Zealand...
and Stephanie Beacham
Stephanie Beacham
Stephanie Beacham is a British television, film and theatre actress. Making her film debut in 1971's The Nightcomers opposite Marlon Brando and becoming more well-known on British television in the BBC series Tenko and the ITV series Connie , her worldwide breakthrough came as a result of playing...
.
Death
Cooper, OBE (and BAFTA equivalent-winner for Maigret) died at the age of 48 after falling from a train as it passed through SurbitonSurbiton
Surbiton, a suburban area of London in the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames, is situated next to the River Thames, with a mixture of Art-Deco courts, more recent residential blocks and grand, spacious 19th century townhouses blending into a sea of semi-detached 20th century housing estates...
, Surrey
Surrey
Surrey is a county in the South East of England and is one of the Home Counties. The county borders Greater London, Kent, East Sussex, West Sussex, Hampshire and Berkshire. The historic county town is Guildford. Surrey County Council sits at Kingston upon Thames, although this has been part of...
, returning from a Guild of Dramatist's Christmas dinner at the Garrick
Garrick Club
The Garrick Club is a gentlemen's club in London.-History:The Garrick Club was founded at a meeting in the Committee Room at Theatre Royal, Drury Lane on Wednesday 17 August 1831...
on 2 December 1966. A post-mortem showed he had consumed the equivalent of half a bottle of whisky and the coroner at Kingston in January 1967 returned a verdict of misadventure. There have been several attempts to attribute his death to suicide, notably by The Stage
The Stage
The Stage is a weekly British newspaper founded in 1880, available nationally and published on Thursdays. Covering all areas of the entertainment industry but focused primarily on theatre, it contains news, reviews, opinion, features and other items of interest, mainly to those who work within the...
, the theatre newspaper; and Nest Cleverdon, widow of Douglas Cleverdon
Douglas Cleverdon
Douglas James Cleverdon was an English bookseller and radio producer, in both fields associated with numerous leading cultural figures in the United Kingdom.-Early life:...
, told Humphrey Carpenter
Humphrey Carpenter
Humphrey William Bouverie Carpenter was an English biographer, writer, and radio broadcaster.-Biography:...
when interviewed by him in 1995 that she believed it was suicide. Cooper's family, understandably perhaps, have always strongly refuted this, not only because it bears no relationship to the playwright's apparent frame of mind during the period leading up to his death, but because it unfairly colours appraisal of his work from an academic standpoint.
Legacy
In 1978 the Giles Cooper AwardsGiles Cooper Awards
The Giles Cooper Awards were honours given to plays written for BBC Radio. Sponsored by the BBC and Methuen Drama, the awards were specifically focused on the script of the best radio drama produced in the past year. Five or six winners were chosen from the entire year's production of BBC drama,...
for radio drama were established by the BBC in conjunction with the publishers Eyre Methuen, and until their discontinuation under Birtist belt-tightening in the early 1990s, were awarded to a plethora of writing talent, including Tom Stoppard
Tom Stoppard
Sir Tom Stoppard OM, CBE, FRSL is a British playwright, knighted in 1997. He has written prolifically for TV, radio, film and stage, finding prominence with plays such as Arcadia, The Coast of Utopia, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, Professional Foul, The Real Thing, and Rosencrantz and...
, Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter, CH, CBE was a Nobel Prize–winning English playwright and screenwriter. One of the most influential modern British dramatists, his writing career spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party , The Homecoming , and Betrayal , each of which he adapted to...
, Anthony Minghella
Anthony Minghella
Anthony Minghella, CBE was an English film director, playwright and screenwriter. He was Chairman of the Board of Governors at the British Film Institute between 2003 and 2007....
, Fay Weldon
Fay Weldon
Fay Weldon CBE is an English author, essayist and playwright, whose work has been associated with feminism. In her fiction, Weldon typically portrays contemporary women who find themselves trapped in oppressive situations caused by the patriarchal structure of British society.-Biography:Weldon was...
, Joanna Trollope
Joanna Trollope
Joanna Trollope OBE , is an English novelist.-Life:Joanna Trollope was educated at Reigate County School for Girls followed by St Hugh's College, Oxford. From 1965 to 1967, she worked at the Foreign Office...
and William Trevor
William Trevor
William Trevor, KBE is an Irish author and playwright. He is considered one of the elder statesman of the Irish literary world and widely regarded as the greatest contemporary writer of short stories in the English language....
.