Alan Wakeman

Alan Wakeman (19 June 1936 – 8 August 2015) was a British author, playwright, vegan and gay rights activist.

Biography

He was born in London and grew up in Coulsdon, Surrey. He attended Purley Grammar School and later did National Service in Singapore and Sri Lanka (then Ceylon). He worked as an architect before spending three years in France, after which he returned to Britain to work as a teacher of English as a foreign languages. Between 1967 and wrote an English language course called English Fast, which sold steadily for several decades. From the 1970s onward, he became a staunch member of the Gay Liberation Front. He wrote the first GLF song, A Gay Song (which was played at his funeral service) and was a founding member of the theatre troupe Gay Sweatshop in 1974. For nearly fifty years, he lived in Soho, London and became a dedicated campaigner against development of historical sites.

Wakeman was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in 1970. He co-authored an early vegan cookbook with Gordon Baskerville in 1986. Wakeman was paid a half fee of £75 for the work he had done. When the series was revived in 2005, Wakeman offered the unmade story to the series a second time, though it was not produced on this occasion either. Numerous elements of The Living World were used in the 2009 Easter Special episode Planet of the Dead though Wakeman never claimed plagiarism against credited writers Gareth Roberts or Russell T Davies. The script was eventually published in the magazine Nothing at the End of the Lane in 2012. He died soon after the publication of his autobiography Fragments of Joy and Sorrow.

Wakeman has no known direct living relatives. Close friends scattered his ashes on Farthing Downs near Coulsdon under a tree as per his wishes (approximate what3words location ///spring.book.senior)

Partial bibliography