John Antony SpurlingInternational Who's Who of Writers and Authors, 23rd edition, Europa Publications, Taylor & Francis Group, 2008, p. 685 (born 17 July 1936) is a Kenyan-English playwright and author who has written thirty-five plays and seven books. Spurling won the 2015 Walter Scott Prize for The Ten Thousand Things. Spurling worked in various other capacities between the 1960s and 1990s, including announcing for BBC Radio from 1963 to 1966, reviewing books and art for BBC Radio and many magazines and newspapers, and as principal art critic for the New Statesman from 1976 to 1988.
Early life and education On 17 July 1936, Spurling was born in Kisumu, Kenya, to Antony Cuthbert Spurling (1906-1984), QC, resident magistrate and Crown Counsel at Kisumu and Nairobi, later Solicitor-General of Trinidad, and Attorney-General of Gambia and of Sierra Leone,The Colonial Office List, H.M. Stationery Office, 1951, p. 643 and Elizabeth Frances, daughter of teacher and historian J. C. Stobart. After growing up in Nairobi, where he attended Nairobi Primary School, Spurling left Kenya for England in his tenth year, continuing his education at the Dragon School in Oxford and Marlborough College in Wiltshire, before completing a Bachelor of Arts from St John's College, Oxford, in 1960.
Career After finishing his secondary education at Marlborough College, Spurling was called up for National Service and commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Royal Artillery from 1955 to 1957. His regiment was stationed in West Germany. Having taken his degree at Oxford, he served as a plebiscite officer in Southern Cameroons from 1960 to 1961. Spurling was a BBC Radio announcer from 1963 to 1966 and reviewed books and radio programs for The Spectator from 1966 to 1970. In 1976, he became art critic for the New Statesman and held the position until 1988.
Spurling began his career as a playwright at the age of twelve when he first encountered Shakespeare's plays at the Dragon School and wrote a farcical piece, performed by his fellow-pupils, about Julius Caesar's invasions of Britain. In 1956 he wrote and directed a Christmas pantomime for his regiment in Germany and in 1958 his Pirandellian comedy Char. was performed by the student ETC (Experimental Theatre Company) at the Oxford Playhouse. Following a Sunday night performance of his play Gerald by professional actors directed by Michael Denison at the Duke of York's Theatre, Spurling was given a two-year grant by a group of West End Managers and wrote MacRune's Guevara, about the recently dead Che Guevara, which was performed in 1969 by the National Theatre and subsequently in many countries around the world. The diverse subjects of his later plays included Ovid, and Chairman Mao and the Aztecs all in one play; the discovery of America; the British Empire; Racine; the Greek philosopher Hypatia, murdered by Christian monks; and an Arabian Nights version of Saddam Hussein. He also wrote plays for television and radio. Spurling published his first novel in 1989 and by 2015 his written works totalled thirty-five plays (a few still unperformed), four novels, two books of literary criticism and a book of Greek myths.
Awards and honours In 1973, Spurling held the Henfield Writing Fellowship at the University of East Anglia and in 2010 became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. In 2015, Spurling was awarded the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction for his fourth novel, set in fourteenth-century China, The Ten Thousand Things.
Personal life In 1961 Spurling married writer Susan Hilary Forrest, better known as Hilary Spurling.The Solicitors' Journal, vol. 121, 1977, p. 648Kelly's Handbook to the Titled, Landed and Official Classes, 95th edition, Kelly's Directories Ltd, 1969, p. 764 The Spurlings have three children (Amy, Nathaniel, and Gilbert) and live in London, England.
Works
Stage plays (first productions)
MacRune's Guevara, National Theatre, London, 1969, published by Calder & Boyars, 1969 Romance, (music and lyrics by Charles Ross) Duke of York's Theatre, London, 1971 In the Heart of the British Museum, Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, 1971, published by Calder & Boyars, 1972 Shades of Heathcliff, Lucky's, Sheffield, 1971, published by Marion Boyars, 1975 Peace in our Time, Crucible Theatre, Sheffield, 1972 McGonagall and the Murderer, Pool Theatre, Edinburgh, 1974 On a Clear Day You Can See Marlowe, Cockpit Theatre, London, 1974 While Rome Burns, Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury, 1976 Antigone Through the Looking Glass, King's Head, London, 1979 The British Empire, Part One, Birmingham Repertory Theatre, 1980, published by Marion Boyars, 1982 Coming Ashore in Guadeloupe, Harrogate Festival, 1982 Racine at the Girls' School, Cheltenham Literary Festival, 1992 The Butcher of Baghdad, The Grace at the Latchmere, London, 1993 Achilles on the Beach at Troy, Bretton Hall, West Yorkshire, 1994 King Arthur in Avalon, Cheltenham Literary Festival, 1999 Robinson Crusoe Meets His Maker, HM Prison Albany, Isle of Wight, 2003 Mutiny in Paradise, HM Prison Kingston, Portsmouth, 2004
Television plays
Hope, BBC 2, 1970 Faith, BBC 2, 1971 Death of Captain Doughty, Granada, 1973 Silver, Granada, 1973
Radio plays
Where Tigers Roam, BBC Radio 3, 1976 Dominion over Palm and Pine (The British Empire, part one), BBC Radio 3, 1982 The Christian Hero (The British Empire, part two), BBC Radio 3, 1982 The Day of Reckoning (The British Empire, part three), BBC Radio 3, 1985 Daughters and Sons (six-part dramatisation of I. Compton-Burnett's novel), BBC Radio 4, 1985 Fancy Pictures: a portrait after Gainsborough, BBC Radio 4, 1988 Discobolus, BBC Radio 3, 1989 The Butcher of Baghdad, BBC Radio 3, 1993 MacRune's Guevara, BBC Radio 3, 1993 Heresy, BBC Radio 3, 2001 A Household in Hove, BBC Radio 4, 2002
Literary criticism
Beckett: a study of his plays (with John Fletcher), Eyre Methuen, 1972 Beckett the Playwright (third, revised edition of above), Methuen, 1985 The Hill Station by J.G.Farrell (his unfinished novel edited with introduction), Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1981 Graham Greene, Methuen, 1983
Fiction The Ragged End, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1989 After Zenda, Andre Deutsch, 1995 A Book of Liszts: Variations on the Theme of Franz Liszt, Seagull, 2011 The Ten Thousand Things, Overlook/Duckworth, 2014 Arcadian Nights: Greek Myths Re-imagined, Overlook/Duckworth, 2015
References