Nick Darke born Nicholas Temperley Watson Darke (29 August 1948 - 10 June 2005) was best known as playwright but was also a writer, poet, lobster fisherman, environmentalist, beachcomber, politician, broadcaster, film-maker and chairman of St Eval Parish Council.

Life and writings

Nick Darke was born at St Eval

St Eval

St Eval is a civil parish and hamlet in north Cornwall, United Kingdom. The hamlet is situated approximately four miles southwest of Padstow....

, near Padstow

Padstow

Padstow is a town, civil parish and fishing port on the north coast of Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. The town is situated on the west bank of the River Camel estuary approximately five miles northwest of Wadebridge, ten miles northwest of Bodmin and ten miles northeast of Newquay...

 in Cornwall

Cornwall

Cornwall is a unitary authority and ceremonial county of England, within the United Kingdom. It is bordered to the north and west by the Celtic Sea, to the south by the English Channel, and to the east by the county of Devon, over the River Tamar. Cornwall has a population of , and covers an area of...

 United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

, and lived most of his life in Porthcothan

Porthcothan

Porthcothan is a coastal village in Cornwall, United Kingdom, situated between Newquay and Padstow. It is within the parish of St Eval. The beach is popular with tourists and surfers and is patrolled by lifeguards during the day in the summer; local surf schools sometimes use the beach for tuition...

 where his family have lived for four generations after moving there from Padstow

Padstow

Padstow is a town, civil parish and fishing port on the north coast of Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. The town is situated on the west bank of the River Camel estuary approximately five miles northwest of Wadebridge, ten miles northwest of Bodmin and ten miles northeast of Newquay...

. His grandfather was a sea-captain who spent his life at sea and was wrecked twice at the Cape of Good Hope. His father T. O. Darke, was a chicken farmer, fisherman and a distinguished ornithologist. His mother was the actress Betty Cowan. He was educated at St Merryn Primary School and Truro Cathedral School, from where he was expelled for getting drunk on sports day. He then attended Newquay

Newquay

Newquay is a town, civil parish, seaside resort and fishing port in Cornwall, England. It is situated on the North Atlantic coast of Cornwall approximately west of Bodmin and north of Truro....

 Grammar School and subsequently trained as an actor at the Rose Bruford College

Rose Bruford College

Rose Bruford College of Theatre & Performance is a British drama school, offering university-level and professional vocational training for theatre and performance and the BA and MA degrees, based in Sidcup, Southeast London.-History:Founded in 1950, Rose Bruford "pioneered the first acting degree...

 in Kent

Kent

Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...

. After making his professional début in repertory at the Lyric, Belfast

Belfast

Belfast is the capital of and largest city in Northern Ireland. By population, it is the 14th biggest city in the United Kingdom and second biggest on the island of Ireland . It is the seat of the devolved government and legislative Northern Ireland Assembly...

, he went on to learn his craft at the Victoria Theatre, Stoke-on-Trent, England, where he acted in over eighty plays and directed Man Is Man, The Miser, Absurd Person Singular, The Scarlet Pimpernel, and A Cuckoo in the Nest, 1977-79. At Stoke he wrote his first full-length play, Never Say Rabbit in a Boat in 1977. He gave up acting to write full-time in 1978. Over the next twenty-eight years, he wrote twenty-seven plays which have been performed in theatres all over the world (eight for The Royal Shakespeare Company and two for The National Theatre

National Theatre

National Theatre may refer to: -in Africa:*Kenya National Theatre in Nairobi, Kenya*National Theatre in Accra, Ghana-in Asia:*National Theater and Concert Hall, Republic of China in Taipei, Taiwan*National Theatre of Japan in Tokyo, Japan...

). He also wrote for radio, television and film.

Many of his plays reflect Cornish society and culture such as the tin

Tin

Tin is a chemical element with the symbol Sn and atomic number 50. It is a main group metal in group 14 of the periodic table. Tin shows chemical similarity to both neighboring group 14 elements, germanium and lead and has two possible oxidation states, +2 and the slightly more stable +4...

 mining, countryside, fishermen and the quirky nature of country living. During the later part of his career he worked regularly with the Cornish theatre company Kneehigh Theatre

Kneehigh Theatre

Kneehigh Theatre is an international theatre company based in Cornwall, England.Kneehigh was started in 1980 by Mike Shepherd. Early productions were performed in village halls, marquees, cliff-tops and quarries...

. One of his last works, the documentary The Wrecking Season (2004) which he wrote and narrated, charts the lives of Cornish beachcombers, of which he himself was one having moved permanently back home to Porthcothan

Porthcothan

Porthcothan is a coastal village in Cornwall, United Kingdom, situated between Newquay and Padstow. It is within the parish of St Eval. The beach is popular with tourists and surfers and is patrolled by lifeguards during the day in the summer; local surf schools sometimes use the beach for tuition...

 in 1990. He married the painter Jane Spurway in 1993 and is the father of film-maker Henry and stepfather of Jim, a marine scientist. He was made a Bard

Bard

In medieval Gaelic and British culture a bard was a professional poet, employed by a patron, such as a monarch or nobleman, to commemorate the patron's ancestors and to praise the patron's own activities.Originally a specific class of poet, contrasting with another class known as fili in Ireland...

 of the Cornish Gorsedd in 1996 taking the Bardic name

Bardic name

A bardic name is a pseudonym, used in Wales, Cornwall and Brittany, by poets and other artists, especially those involved in the eisteddfod movement....

 Scryfer Gwaryow ('Writer of Plays').

While recovering from a stroke

Stroke

A stroke, previously known medically as a cerebrovascular accident , is the rapidly developing loss of brain function due to disturbance in the blood supply to the brain. This can be due to ischemia caused by blockage , or a hemorrhage...

 that he suffered in January 2001, Nick Darke was diagnosed with terminal cancer and died, aged 56, in June 2005. A unique beach funeral ceremony was followed by burial in St Eval churchyard. His son Henry and wife Jane Darke continued his legacy in film. The Art of Catching Lobsters, written and directed by Jane Darke, is a moving account of her husband's death and the grieving process. Premiered on BBC Four

BBC Four

BBC Four is a British television network operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation and available to digital television viewers on Freeview, IPTV, satellite and cable....

 on 27 September 2007. it was subsequently shown at the 2007 Cornwall Film Festival

Cornwall Film Festival

The Cornwall Film Festival is an annual festival started in 2001 which focuses on Cornish film making, offering local and national premieres, and hosts masterclasses, workshops and discussions for everyone from the enthusiast to the professional.The festival supports Cornish film making in the...

 A film version of his first play Never Say Rabbit In A Boat is in pre-production and will be made by APT Films. His son Henry Darke has made a film version of Danger My Ally.

In 2009 the Cornwall Youth Theatre Company began Darke Visions, an eighteen-month festival running from Spring 2009 to Summer 2010 celebrating the life and work of Cornwall’s foremost playwright, with the performance of Hells' Mouth (directed by Harry and Theresa Forbes-Pearce); The Body (directed by Tom Faulkner); and Ting Tang Mine (directed by Rory Wilton and Emma Spurgin Hussey). These plays went on tour in Cornwall during March/April 2009. In 2011 the theatre group o-region toured small-scale venues with a new show One Darke Night which also celebrated Nick Darke's rich legacy. Combining specially commissioned film (featuring Nick's son, Henry) and a small cast of players, the play fused extracts from lesser-known works with firm audience favourites such as The King of Prussia and extracts from Nick's other writings. Compiled by Simon Harvey who had worked with Nick on the production of his final play Laughing Gas in 2006, the production provided fresh insight into the remakable range and diversity of Nick's catalogue of work.

Nick Darke's literary voice is very distinctive and although many of his characters, plots and settings are rooted in the Cornish past, his themes are often of relevance to the Cornwall of today. As one of his earliest reviews, in The Financial Times stated: "Darke gives shape to a Cornish idenitity that feels vital and real and has nothing to do with clay pipes and clotted cream". Although he made a vital contribution to the culture of Cornwall in the last quarter of the 20th century, he himself claimed only that his greatest achievement (and that of his wife Jane) was convincing North Cornwall District Council not to mechanically rake the beaches in their area that was damaging the natural eco-structure.

The Nick Darke Award

The Nick Darke Award has been developed by Nick Darke’s widow, with the support of Nick Darke’s family and Cornwall County Council. It is funded and administered by University College Falmouth’s School of Media and The Works (Dance & Theatre Cornwall Ltd), and supported by KEAP (Kernow Education Arts Partnership). The annual award is a financial prize aimed at writers, giving them time to write, and offer some support through the writing process. Submissions can be in any of the genres that Nick Darke himself excelled, stage play, screenplay, radio play or documentary film. See the official Nick Darke website for details.

Plays

• Mother Goose (1977; Victoria Theatre, Stoke on Trent) - pantomime
  Pantomime
  Pantomime — not to be confused with a mime artist, a theatrical performer of mime—is a musical-comedy theatrical production traditionally found in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Jamaica, South Africa, India, Ireland, Gibraltar and Malta, and is mostly performed during the...
  
  
• Never Say Rabbit In A Boat (1977; Victoria Theatre, Stoke-on-Trent) - his first full-length play, set in Cornwall about an ageing rabbit catcher and a beach seine net company. Hellyar Jan is also a fisherman, smuggler and born liar. The action takes place on the beach of a small bay in North Conrwall and in Hellyar's old house on the cliff above.
• Low tide (1977; Plymouth Theatre Company) - about tourism set on a beach.
• Sinbad the Sailor (1978; Victoria Theatre, Stoke on Trent) - pantomime
  Pantomime
  Pantomime — not to be confused with a mime artist, a theatrical performer of mime—is a musical-comedy theatrical production traditionally found in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Jamaica, South Africa, India, Ireland, Gibraltar and Malta, and is mostly performed during the...
  
  
• Summer Trade (1979; Orchard Theatre) - takes place in a pub somewhere on the North Cornish coast the day after the ex-landlord's last night. The new landlord has plans to modernise.
• Beauty and the Beast (1979; Orchard Theatre) - pantomime
  Pantomime
  Pantomime — not to be confused with a mime artist, a theatrical performer of mime—is a musical-comedy theatrical production traditionally found in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Jamaica, South Africa, India, Ireland, Gibraltar and Malta, and is mostly performed during the...
  
  
• Landmarks (1979; Chester Gateway Theatre) - set in the thirties in rural England when horse met the tractor for the first and last time.
• A Tickle On The River's Back (1979; Theatre Royal Stratford East) - set on the Thames about a family of lightermen and the decline of the industry on the river over the last 20 years.
• High Water (1980; Royal Shakespeare Company) - set on a beach early one morning. Two men meet to go wrecking and discover they are father and son.
• Say Your Prayers (1981; Joint Stock Theatre Company) - set in the time of the Roman Empire, and based on an interpretation of the teachings of St Paul. The play takes a wry look at Christianity as the 'Born Again' movement develops into a powerful right-wing lobby in the USA, while the established church in Britain is at its lowest ebb yet.
• The Catch (1981; for The Royal Court Theatre Upstairs) - two fishermen bedevilled by the European Economic Community
  European Economic Community
  The European Economic Community The European Economic Community (EEC) The European Economic Community (EEC) (also known as the Common Market in the English-speaking world, renamed the European Community (EC) in 1993The information in this article primarily covers the EEC's time as an independent...
  
   cast their nets for a different kind of catch - cocaine.
• Cider with Rosie (1981) - growing up in the idyllic English countryside between the two world wars (based on the autobiography of Laurie Lee
  Laurie Lee
  Laurence Edward Alan "Laurie" Lee, MBE was an English poet, novelist, and screenwriter, raised in the village of Slad, and went to Marling School, Gloucestershire. His most famous work was an autobiographical trilogy which consisted of Cider with Rosie , As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning and...
  
   of the same name)
• The Lowestoff Man (1982; Orchard Theatre Company) - sequel to "The Catch", a mysterious American arrives to claim his cocaine
• The Body (1983; Royal Shakespeare Company) - an eccentric West Country community contend with the presence of an American airforce base. "Under Milk Wood
  Under Milk Wood
  Under Milk Wood is a 1954 radio drama by Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, adapted later as a stage play. A movie version, Under Milk Wood directed by Andrew Sinclair, was released during 1972....
  
  meets Dr Strangelove", was one critical verdict. It was written during the cold war with the USSR when many were concerned about American nuclear weapons on British soil. Nick had a friend whose farm backed onto the St Mawgan Air Base. Every morning the farmer went to check his sheep while a US Marine followed his movements with a gun. In Nick's research he learned how Marines were trained, broken down and rebuilt so they'd be effective fighting men. Nick said that The Body was a play about identity.
• The Earth Turned Inside Out (1984; community play for the Borough of Restormel
  Restormel
  Restormel was a borough of Cornwall, United Kingdom, one of the six administrative divisions that made up the county. Its council was based in St Austell . Other towns included Newquay....
  
  , Cornwall) - the rivalries of two Cornish mining communities set in 1815 at a time when the Cornish copper mining industry was healthy but prone to market forces.
• Bud (1985; Royal Shakespeare Company) - fifty-year-old Bud has spent twenty years without rancour or spite working his wife's farm but his peaceful existence comes to an abrupt halt when a misjudgement forces him to question his motivation and examine the 'acid drop scorchin holes in the startched napkin of our marriage'.
• The Oven Glove Murders (1986, The Bush Theatre, London) - described by one critic as "an acerbic response to the British cinema revival led by Chariots of Fire
  Chariots of Fire
  Chariots of Fire is a 1981 British film. It tells the fact-based story of two athletes in the 1924 Olympics: Eric Liddell, a devout Scottish Christian who runs for the glory of God, and Harold Abrahams, an English Jew who runs to overcome prejudice....
  
  ", the play is a writer's experience of the film industry. A playwright has a sceenplay set in The Greenham Common peace camp given the Hollywood treatment by a young producer; a similar premise is the basis of the film The Strike by The Comic Strip
  The Comic Strip
  The Comic Strip is a group of British comedians, known for their television series The Comic Strip Presents.... The core members are Adrian Edmondson, Dawn French, Rik Mayall, Nigel Planer, Peter Richardson and Jennifer Saunders, with frequent appearances by Keith Allen, Robbie Coltrane and...
  
   team two years later.
• The Dead Monkey (1986; Royal Shakespeare Company at the Barbican Pit) - a childless Californian couple sit down to a candlelit supper to commemorate the death of their fifteen-year-old pet. The party sours after a series of discomforting revelations. Nick Darke's best known play, The Dead Monkey has been staged many times around the world, including a major USA revival featuring David Soul
  David Soul
  David Soul is an American-British actor and singer, best known for his role as Detective Kenneth "Hutch" Hutchinson in the television programme Starsky and Hutch . He gained British citizenship in 2004.-Early life:...
  
   and in Germany in translation as Der tote Affe.
• Ting Tang Mine (1987; for The National Theatre) - reworking of the community play "The Earth Turned Inside Out": the fate of two competing mining communities used as a parable for Thatcher's Britain.
• A Place Called Mars (1988; community play for Thornbury, South Gloucestershire). The play is set on a haunted marshland.
• Kissing The Pope (1989; Royal Shakespeare Company) - originally known as Campesinos, this is Nick Darke's play for Nicaragua
  Nicaragua
  Nicaragua is the largest country in the Central American American isthmus, bordered by Honduras to the north and Costa Rica to the south. The country is situated between 11 and 14 degrees north of the Equator in the Northern Hemisphere, which places it entirely within the tropics. The Pacific Ocean...
  
  . Set in revolutionary South America
  South America
  South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...
  
  , its main themes are about becoming a man in a violent world and about having to decide why to kill before you know why to live. As part of his research, Nick travelled to Nicaragua during the war and wrote a moving diary of his experiences that was published with the play text by Nick Hearn Books - see Published Works.
• Fears and Miseries of the Third Term - part contributor (1989, Young Vic Studio).
• Hell's Mouth (1992; Royal Shakespeare Company) - story after Sophocles
  Sophocles
  Sophocles is one of three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays have survived. His first plays were written later than those of Aeschylus, and earlier than or contemporary with those of Euripides...
  
  , set in post-apoclyptic dystopia with Cornish nationalists fighting for independence from England.
• Danger My Ally (1993; Kneehigh Theatre) - is about what happens to two eco-warriors when they are caught trying to blow up an open-cast mine. (The title is taken from the autobiography of F.A. “Mike” Mitchell-Hedges
  F. A. Mitchell-Hedges
  Frederick Albert Mitchell-Hedges was an English adventurer, traveller, and writer. His name was almost always seen in print as F. A. Mitchell-Hedges; he sometimes went by the name "Mike Hedges". Mitchell-Hedges had a talent for telling colourful stories...
  
  , the English adventurer and traveller who was the real Indiana Jones
  Indiana Jones
  Colonel Henry Walton "Indiana" Jones, Jr., Ph.D. is a fictional character and the protagonist of the Indiana Jones franchise. George Lucas and Steven Spielberg created the character in homage to the action heroes of 1930s film serials...
  
   of his day.)
• The Bogus (also known as Quoit) (1994; Kneehigh Theatre) - billed as a pan-Atlantic tragi-comedy of murder, corruption and nuptials. When an assassin's bullet lands Arthur May, President-Elect of the USA, six feet under, John Sty dons his persona and leaves Springville, Utah, on a one-way ticket to the village of Quoit in Cornwall.
• Knock Out The Pin (1994; Cornwall Youth Theatre Company) - about Newquay
  Newquay
  Newquay is a town, civil parish, seaside resort and fishing port in Cornwall, England. It is situated on the North Atlantic coast of Cornwall approximately west of Bodmin and north of Truro....
  
   lifeboat.
• The King of Prussia (1996; for Plymouth Theatre Royal/Kneehigh Theatre) - based on the life and times of 18th century Cornish smuggler, John Carter
  John Carter (smuggler)
  John Carter was a notorious English smuggler, nicknamed the "King of Prussia" in reference to his smuggling operations out of Prussia Cove, Cornwall with his brothers, Harry and Charles.He obtained the nickname because he was said to closely resemble Frederick the Great, the King of Prussia, and...
  
   of Prussia Cove
  Prussia Cove
  Prussia Cove , formerly called the King's Cove, is a small private estate on the coast of Mount's Bay and to the east of Cudden Point, west Cornwall, UK. Part of the area is designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest , a Geological Conservation Review site and is in an Area of Outstanding...
  
  , West Cornwall. Nick saw this as a play about looking after your community - the opposite of what he felt was happening in Cornwall and the rest of Britain in the 1990s. He felt the Thatcherite Free Market ecconomy expoused in the 1980s was breaking up industry everywhere and leaving communities vulnerable.
• The Man with Green Hair (1997; Bristol Old Vic) - drew its inspiration from the Camelford water pollution incident
  Camelford water pollution incident
  The Camelford water pollution incident involved the accidental contamination of the drinking water supply to the town of Camelford, Cornwall, England with 20 tonnes of aluminium sulphate in July 1988...
  
   of 1988. A water company somewhere in Cornwall has had a slight mix-up with its chemicals and poisoned the water supply. The mustard-keen pollution control officers want to expose the dirty dealings, the water company and the government want to cover it up. The local community side with the water company, for fear of destroying the lucrative tourist trade.
• The Riot (2000; for Kneehigh production at the National Theatre) - set in the fishing village of Newlyn
  Newlyn
  Newlyn is a town and fishing port in southwest Cornwall, England, United Kingdom.Newlyn forms a conurbation with the neighbouring town of Penzance and is part of Penzance civil parish...
  
   in 1896, about the so-called "Sabbath riots", when the devout Cornish fisherman whose Methodist beliefs forbade them to fish on Sundays demonstrated violently against the Sunday fishing fleet from Lowestoft
  Lowestoft
  Lowestoft is a town in the English county of Suffolk. The town is on the North Sea coast and is the most easterly point of the United Kingdom. It is north-east of London, north-east of Ipswich and south-east of Norwich...
  
  .
• Laughing Gas (2005; o-region) a comedy about the life of Sir Humphry Davy unfinished at the time of Nick Darke's death; completed posthumously by Cornish actor and playwright Carl Grose and produced by the Truro-based production company o-region.
• One Darke Night (2011; o-region) - a compendium of extracts from Nick Darke's plays spanning nearly thirty years of his writing career, together with film commentary and extracts from his other writings; intended for simple staging with a small number of performers, emphasis on the words.

Television and films

• Dancers (a dance therapy programme, TV, 1982)
• Farmers Arms (BBC1 'Play for Today', 1983)
• The Bench (TV, 1999)
• Breaking the Chains (film, 2000) Writer: John Angarrack, Director/producer: Nick Darke. Cornish historian John Angarrack talks to Nick Darke about Cornish cultural suppression and the way forward.
• The Cornish Farmer (film, 2004) Writer: Nick Darke, Directors: Nick Darke/Mark Jenkin, Producer: Jane Darke. Nick Darke talks to his old friend, Warwick Cowling, about threshing and other farm practices. The film uses 8 mm archive film shot by Nick’s father in the 1960s in St Eval.
• The Wrecking Season (film, 2004; commissioned by the Arts Council and directed by his wife, Jane Darke, first broadcast on BBC4 22 July 2005) a film about beachcombing on the Cornish coast - available on DVD from Boatshed Films.
• The Art of Catching Lobsters (film, 2005; first broadcast on BBC4 27 September 2007), Nick and Jane's second film was initially conceived as a film about Nick's recovery from a stroke through such activities as beachcombing and lobster fishing. Nick was then diagnosed with terminal cancer and the film became a record of his attempts to pass on his knowledge and experience of lobster fishing and the ways of the sea to his son Henry, as well as a poignant documentary about love, loss and the grieving process--also available on DVD from Boatshed Films.
• Nick Darke also appeared in the Exmouth to Bristol episode of the TV series "Coast"

Radio

• Foggy Anniversary (1979)
• Summer Trade (1980)
• Landmarks (1981)
• Lifeboat (1981)
• The Catch (1983)
• So Long as Lobsters Swim the Sea (1997; Another Strand feature) - described as "An occasional series where those well-known in one field talk about another consuming interest in their lives. Nick Darke, author of many plays for radio, the National Theatre, and the Royal Shakespeare Company, is also a keen fisherman. He talks about his lobster pots and nets off Padstow."
• Cider with Rosie (radio adaptation of Laurie Lee's autobiogaphy) (1998), in two episodes broadcast by BBC as "The Classic Serial".
• Gone Fishing (1998)
• Bawcock's Eve (1999) - a mystery story set in Mousehole, Cornwall.
• Flotsam & Jetsam (1999) - a family tale based in Porthnant Bay, Cornwall.
• The King of Prussia (1999) - set off the Cornish coast in 1789. A mad king, heavy taxes, and smugglers...and in the other direction, a country on the brink of revolution. Based on his play of the same name.
• Underground (feature on Cornish tin mining) (2000) - voices of miners and their families are woven into a text by Nick Darke and music by Jim Carey.
• In quest of Joseph Emidy (2000) - the amazing story of Joseph Antonio Emidy
  Joseph Antonio Emidy
  Joseph Antonio Emidy was a West African born slave in early life, but later became a famous and celebrated violinist and composer in Cornwall.-Life:...
  
   an African slave who eventually became a violinist in the Lisbon Orchestra, fought in the Napoleonic Wars, then settled in Falmouth and became a successful teacher and composer. Produced by Juliam May, with contributions from Richard McGrady (muscial historian), Tunde Jegede (composer), Nancy Naro (slavery expert) and Emidy's descendants.
• The Fisherman's Tale (2000) - a group of travellers take shelter in a motorway service station from appalling weather. There is no radio or TV, so to keep each other entertained they each tell a story. Darke's contribution to the "2000 tales" series ", written on the 600th anniversary of Chaucer's death. The (verse) text was first performed as a play as part of the Darke Night Out production - see Plays above. Aunt Feen, part-time caretaker of a house on Bobby's Bay, St Merryn, decides to supplement her income by letting the property to a young man, Jim, without the knowledge of the house's absentee owner Hugo Bryson Spelles - see the official Nick Darke website for the full text http://nickdarke.net/archives.
• Atlantic Drifting (BBC Radio 4 documentary produced by Simon Elmes, 30th Nov 2001 - the forerunner of The Wrecking season film)
• Dumbstruck (2003; first broadcast on BBC R4) - documentary using an audio diary Nick kept during his rehabilitation after a stroke.
• Hooked (2005; first broadcast 18 July 2005 BBC R4) - a comedy drama-documentary telling the story of a Cornish couple who are asked for their advice by a Londoner on how to fish for sea-bass, who subsequently cashes in on his new knowledge. Recorded on Porthcothan Beach.

Nick Darke also appeared on the Radio 4 programme "Nature" (broadcast 16 Feb 2004).

Other projects

• The Lobster (1998) for speaker and chamber group ('Thoughts of a crustacean upon entering a trap', text by Nick Darke). Performed at the QEH
  Queen Elizabeth Hall
  The Queen Elizabeth Hall is a music venue on the South Bank in London, United Kingdom that hosts daily classical, jazz, and avant-garde music and dance performances. The QEH forms part of Southbank Centre arts complex and stands alongside the Royal Festival Hall, which was built for the Festival...
  
   in 1998 by Nicole Tibbels (speaker) with the Mephisto Ensemble conducted by the composer, Christopher Gunning (born 1944). Recorded by them on the Meridian label (CDE 84498).

Published works

• The Body (RSC playtext: Methuen Publishing, pbk 1983); ISBN 0413533409
• Ting Tang Mine & Other Plays (New Theatrescripts: Methuen Publishing, pbk 1987); ISBN 0413179303
• Kissing The Pope - play text and Nicaraguan travel diary (Nick Hern Books, pbk 1990); ISBN 1854590472
• Cider with Rosie (Heinemann Plays: new edition, hrdbk, 1993); ISBN 0435232959
• The Riot (Methuen Modern Plays: Methuen Drama, pbk 1999); ISBN 0413737306
• Nick Darke Plays (Methuen Contemporary Dramatists: Vol 1, pbk 1999) - incls "The Dead Monkey", "The King of Prussia", "The Body" and "Ting Tang Mine"; ISBN 0413737209

External links

• Nick Darke website
• Website and online shop for The Art of Catching Lobsters
• Your thoughts on The Art of Catching Lobsters BBC4
• Trailer for The Art of Catching Lobsters from the Cornish films website. (Flash video - 20.5MB)
• Cornish farewell for playwright BBC news story
• Actor finishes Darke's final play BBC news story
• The Wrecking Season
• RealPlayer Presentation of Radio 4 programme "Nature" February 16, 2004 featuring Nick Darke.
• Radio plays and credits
• Obituary from The Guardian Newspaper
• Obituary from The Independent Newspaper
• Obituary from The Daily Telegraph Newspaper