Andrew Davies

Andrew Wynford Davies (born 20 September 1936) is a British writer of screenplays and novels, best known for Marmalade Atkins and A Very Peculiar Practice, and his adaptations of Vanity Fair and Sense and Sensibility. He was made a BAFTA Fellow in 2002.

Education and Early Career
Davies was born in Rhiwbina, Cardiff, Wales. He attended Whitchurch Grammar School in Cardiff and then University College, London, where he received a BA in English in 1957. He took a teaching position at St. Clement Danes Grammar School in London, where he was on the teaching staff from 1958–61. He held a similar post at Woodberry Down Comprehensive School in Hackney, London from 1961–63. Following that, he was a lecturer in English at Coventry College of Education (which later merged with the University of Warwick to become the Faculty of Educational Studies and later the Warwick Institute of Education), and then at the University of Warwick.

In 1960, Davies contributed material to the BBC Home Service's Monday Night at Home strand, alongside Harold Pinter and Ivor Cutler. He wrote his first play for radio in 1964 and many more were to follow. In 1960, he married Diana Huntley; the couple have a son and daughter. He is resident in Kenilworth, a town of Warwickshire.

Writer
Davies' first television play, Who's Going to Take Me On?, was broadcast in 1967 as part of BBC1's The Wednesday Play strand. His early plays were written as a sideline to his work in education, many of them appearing in anthology series such as Thirty Minute Theatre, Play for Today and Centre Stage. His first serial adaptation of a work of fiction was of To Serve Them All My Days (1980), from the novel by R. F. Delderfield. A Very Peculiar Practice (1986-88) is a campus based comedy-drama series that drew upon his career in education.

He is now best known for his adaptations of classic works of literature for television including Pride and Prejudice (1995) starring Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle, Vanity Fair (1998), and Sense and Sensibility (2008). He is the writer of the screenplays both for the BBC production Middlemarch (1994) and a planned film of the same name once announced for 2011 release.

Davies also co-devised with Bernadette Davis the sitcom Game On for BBC2 and co-wrote the first two series broadcast in 1995 and 1996.

The popularity of his adaptation of Michael Dobbs's political thriller House of Cards was a significant influence in Dobbs's decision to write two sequels, which Davies also adapted for television. In film, he has collaborated on the screenplays for both of the Bridget Jones films, based on Helen Fielding's successful novels.

He is also a prolific writer for children. The first of his few novels was Conrad's War, published by Blackie in 1978. Davies won the annual Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, which is judged by a panel of British children's writers and recognises the year's best book by an author who has not yet won it. He has written Alfonso Bonzo(book and television series), and the adventures of Marmalade Atkins (television series and numerous books). He also wrote the stories Dark Towers and Badger Girl for BBC TV's Look and Read series of programmes for schools audiences.

2008 saw the release of his adaptations of the 1999 novel Affinity by Sarah Waters, Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited (a film), Charles Dickens' Little Dorrit (a BBC series). Little Dorrit won 7 out of its 11 Emmy nominations and earned Davies an Emmy for Outstanding Writing for a Miniseries.

Planned adaptations of Dombey and Son, one of Dickens' lesser-read works, and Anthony Trollope's Palliser novels were both scrapped by the BBC in late 2009, following a previously announced move away from "bonnet dramas".

ITV is looking to recreate its period drama success with Downton Abbey with new series Mr Selfridge, an initially eight-part serial written by Davies and starring Jeremy Piven. It first aired on 6 January 2013.

On 18 February 2013, BBC announced plans for a six-part adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's War & Peace to be scripted by Davies and aired on BBC One in 2015.

To Serve Them All My Days (1980)

 * Dark Towers (Look And Read: 1981)
 * Diana (1984)
 * Badger Girl (Look And Read: 1984)
 * A Very Peculiar Practice (1986–88)
 * Mother Love (1989)
 * House of Cards (1990)
 * Anglo-Saxon Attitudes (1992)
 * The Old Devils (1992)
 * To Play the King (1993)
 * Middlemarch (1994)
 * Game On (1995, with Bernadette Davis)
 * Pride and Prejudice (1995)
 * The Final Cut (1995)
 * Wilderness (1996)
 * Moll Flanders (1996)
 * Bill's New Frock (1997)
 * Vanity Fair (1998)
 * Wives and Daughters (1999)
 * Take a Girl Like You (2000)
 * The Way We Live Now (2001)
 * Daniel Deronda (2002)
 * Doctor Zhivago (2002)
 * Tipping the Velvet (2002)
 * He Knew He Was Right (2004)
 * Bleak House (2005)
 * The Line of Beauty (2006)
 * Northanger Abbey (2007), part of ITV's Jane Austen Season
 * A Room with a View (2007)
 * Fanny Hill (2007)
 * Sense and Sensibility (2008)
 * Little Dorrit (2008)
 * South Riding (2011)
 * Mr Selfridge (2013)
 * House of Cards (2013)
 * Quirke (2014)
 * A Poet in New York (2014)
 * War and Peace (2015)
 * The Spoils of Poynton (TBA)
 * Who Speaks For England (TBA)

Television plays

 * Who's Going to Take Me On? (1965)
 * Is That Your Body, Boy? (1970)
 * No Good Unless It Hurts (1973)
 * The Water Maiden (1974)
 * Grace (1975)
 * The Imp of the Perverse (1975)
 * The Signalman (1976)
 * A Martyr to the System (1976)
 * Eleanor Marx (1977)
 * Velvet Glove (1977)
 * Fearless Frank (1978)
 * Renoir My Father (1978)
 * Bavarian Night (1981)
 * Heart attack Hotel (1983)
 * Baby I Love You (1985)
 * Pythons on the Mountain (1985)
 * Inappropriate Behaviour (1987)
 * Lucky Sunil (1988)
 * Ball Trap on the Cote Sauvage (1989)
 * Filipina Dreamgirls (1991)
 * A Very Polish Practice (1992)
 * Anna Lee (1993)
 * Harnessing Peacocks (1993)
 * A Few Short Journeys of the Heart (1994)
 * Emma (1996)
 * Getting Hurt (1998)
 * A Rather English Marriage (1998)
 * Othello (2001)
 * Boudica (2003)
 * Falling (2005)
 * The Chatterley Affair (2006)
 * Diary of a Nobody (2007)

Cinema

 * Circle of Friends (1995)
 * The Tailor of Panama (2001)
 * Bridget Jones's Diary (2001, with Helen Fielding and Richard Curtis)
 * Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (2004, with Helen Fielding)
 * Brideshead Revisited (2008)
 * The Three Musketeers (2011)
 * Middlemarch (2011)

Novels

 * Conrad's War (Blackie and Son, 1978) —winner of the Guardian Prize
 * Getting Hurt (1989), for adults
 * Dirty Faxes (1990), short stories
 * B. Monkey (1992) —adapted by others as the 1998 film B. Monkey


 * Based on the TV series
 * A Very Peculiar Practice (1986, Coronet) —novelization of A Very Peculiar Practice, season one
 * A Very Peculiar Practice: The New Frontier (1988, Methuen)

Stage plays

 * Rose (1980)
 * Prin (1990)

Picture books
Andrew and Diana Davies have written at least two children's picture books.
 * Poonam's Pets (Methuen Children's, 1990), illustrated by Paul Dowling
 * Raj In Charge (Hamish Hamilton, 1994), illus. Debi Gliori