Writing

Simon Gray

Born 1936-10-21 · Hayling Island, Hampshire, England, UK

Acting credits

Behind the camera

Sleeping Dog poster
NR

A black barman upsets a colonial Governor who has just retired and returned to England. He locks the barman in the cellar and treats him like an animal.

Sleeping Dog

1967

Femme Fatale poster
8.0

Sicilian-born Maddalena has moved to a Devonshire village in England to escape volatile sexual tempers. She marries, but the lust she inspires in the villagers makes them drop dead.

Femme Fatale

1993

Spoiled poster
NR

A schoolmaster invites a nineteen-year-old student to stay with him and his wife to cram for imminent exams.

Spoiled

1968

The Rear Column poster
NR

Set in the jungle of the Congo Free State in 1887–88, the story begins after explorer Henry Morton Stanley, has gone to relieve Emin Pasha, governor of Equatoria, from a siege by Mahdist forces. He leaves behind him a 'rear column' with supplies at the Yambuya camp on the Aruwimi River and instructs them to wait until the Arab slave trader, Tippu Tib, has brought 600 more porters before following on to Equatoria. The play follows the story of the men left waiting in the camp. The officers depicted in the play are based on historical figures.

The Rear Column

1980

A Month in the Country poster
6.5

A destitute WWI veteran is hired to help carry out restoration work on a medieval mural in a rural Yorkshire church. While living in the quiet village, he forms a close friendship with an archaeologist and begins to come to terms with his trauma.

A Month in the Country

1987

Common Pursuit poster
NR

Common Pursuit is a play by Simon Gray which follows the lives of six characters who first meet as undergraduates at Cambridge University when they are involved in setting up a literary magazine called The Common Pursuit.

Common Pursuit

1992

Death of a Teddy Bear poster
NR

Inspired by a real-life case, a woman encourages her lover to murder her older husband.

Death of a Teddy Bear

1967

They Never Slept poster
NR

When plucky Corporal Pru Merriman reports to her superiors Monk and Bob for driving duty, she finds herself catapulted into the murky world of the French Resistance.

They Never Slept

1991

Butley poster
6.7

Butley is set in Queen Mary’s College, London and focuses on two English instructors, Ben Butley, a middle-aged former T. S. Eliot expert whose life is now in a shambles, and his protégé, Joey, a homosexual. With both Joey and his wife leaving, Butley faces a life alone, fighting back with wit, obscenity and booze.

Butley

1974

Running Late poster
9.0

Television interviewer George Grant, renowned for his ability to get at the truth, is at the peak of his career. But when he receives a message at his office that his wife needs to see him urgently - a matter of life and death - his life is irreversibly altered. And so the frantic search begins for George Grant 's truth - and his wife.

Running Late

1992

No artwork available
8.5

A barrister's complex life unravels as he juggles a court case and highly-strung mistress.

Plaintiffs and Defendants

1975

After Pilkington poster
7.4

The quiet life of Oxford professor James Westgate is shattered when he is introduced to Penny, the wife of his crass new colleague.

After Pilkington

1987

Quartermaine's Terms poster
7.0

TV adaptation of the play set in a Cambridge School of English for Foreigners in 1962. St John Quartermaine is a rather ineffective but kindly teacher at the school who, becuase of his gentle character, has hardly any enemies - in fact, the rest of the staff confide in him or generally pplay on his good nature. Then Derek Meadle arrives on the scene. He is a new part-time teacher who really wants to be full-time, but people like Quartermaine are in the way.

Quartermaine's Terms

1987

The Man in the Sidecar poster
10.0

Examines the relationship between Edith, a famous and successful novelist, and her writer husband, and how her own domestic situation is paralleled in her latest book about a woman enjoying the self-destruction of her husband.

The Man in the Sidecar

1971

No artwork available
4.0

Two men, with families in tow, meet for lunch. As they talk, repressed school memories come to the surface leaving them unsure about the paths they have taken in life.

Two Sundays

1975