David Pownall FRSL (19 May 1938 – 21 November 2022) was a British playwright and prolific radio dramatist performed internationally, and novelist translated into several languages.
Life and career
David Pownall was born in Liverpool on 19 May 1938. He graduated from Keele University in 1960.
Pownall worked as a personnel officer with the Ford Motor Company, Dagenham, Essex, from 1960-63. In 1963, Pownall moved to Zambia to take up a post as the personnel manager at Anglo American PLC and lived and worked there until 1969; he had several early plays produced there.
Returning to England to write full-time, he became the resident writer of the Century Theatre touring group, from 1970-72. He was resident writer of the Duke's Playhouse, Lancaster, from 1972–75, and had several plays produced by them. His plays in icorporated reflections on the locality, and meditations on the plays of Shakespeare.
Pownall helped found the Paines Plough Theatre, originally based in Coventry, where he was resident writer from 1975-80. In 1977, his play Richard III, Part Two, first produced by Paines Plough, was taken to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
Being deeply interested in music, he wrote several plays related to the challenges of composers, both in terms of personal creativity, and, in Master Class (1983), working within the oppressive political environment of the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin.
Pownall wrote plays for radio, as well as material for performance by children and college students. The Sutton Elms website lists with dates 75 plays broadcast by BBC radio between 1972 and 2018.
As a novelist, Pownall's early work, such as The Raining Tree War (1974) and its sequel African Horse (1975) were comic novels in the mode of Evelyn Waugh. Then came historical fantasies such as White Cutter (1988), The Catalogue of Men (1999) and The Ruling Passion (2008).
He died on 22 November 2022, at the age of 84.His wife Alex survives him; They have a son, Max. Pownall also had two sons from previous marriages, Gareth and Tom.
Legacy and honours
Honorary Doctorate of Letters from Keele University; and
Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1976, for the linked novels The Raining Tree War and African Horse Edinburgh Festival Fringe Awards for Music to Murder By (1976) and Richard III Part Two (1977). 1981 John Whiting Award for Beef (1981), radio play. New York Theatre Yearbook: Best Foreign Play on Broadway, and the London Stage Director’s Award for Livingstone and Sechele (1985). 1980s – Los Angeles Drama Desk Award and the Plays and Players nominations for Best Play: Master Class Giles Cooper Awards for two radio plays, plus a Sony Gold and two Sony Silver Awards.