Cecil Taylor

Cecil Philip Taylor (6 November 1929 – 9 December 1981) usually credited as C.P. Taylor, was a Scottish playwright. He wrote almost 80 plays during his 16 years as a professional playwright, including several for radio and television. He also made a number of documentary programmes for the BBC. His plays tended to draw on his Jewish background and his Socialist Marxist viewpoint, and to be written in dialect.

Personal life Taylor was born on 6 November 1929 in Glasgow and grew up in the Crosshill district of Govanhill, in a politically radical Jewish family with strong ties to the Labour Party. He left Queen's Park Secondary School

In 1967 he married Elizabeth Screen, with whom he also had two children, David and Catheryn. he transferred the play by J. M. Barrie to an Elswick estate.

His most successful play is probably Good (1981), in which a liberal German Professor of German literature, Halder, becomes involved with the Third Reich war machine and Auschwitz through moral cowardice and subtle corruption. Halder, however, continues to see himself as a 'good man' even as he is drawn further and further into Hitler's nightmare. Good was first staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Donmar Warehouse in September 1981, with Alan Howard, as Halder, winning both the Evening Standard Award and the Plays and Players Best Actor awards. The play is frequently revived; in March 1999, also at the Donmar Warehouse, Charles Dance played the leading role. In 2023, it was produced in London's Harold Pinter theatre, with David Tennant as Halder.

Film and television versions of his plays In 1989, playwright Jack Rosenthal made a posthumous adaptation for television of And a Nightingale Sang. This Tyne Tees Television production starred Joan Plowright, Phyllis Logan, John Woodvine, Stephen Tompkinson, and Tom Watt, and won a Prix Europa in 1990. In 2008, Good was released as a feature film, with Viggo Mortensen in the role of Halder and Jason Isaacs playing his Jewish friend Glückstein.

Awards The World Jewish Congress Playwriting Prize (1954) Arts Council Playwright's bursary (1965) Scottish Television Theatre Award (1969)