Born Chesterfield, Derbyshire. After reading English at Cambridge he was an English Teacher and Head of Department in South Yorkshire. Became a full time writer in 1976. He was Young Writers' Tutor at the Royal Court Theatre from 1981-1984. In the 1990s he also tutored a dozen promising young playwrights at the National Theatre Studio, without destroying their careers. He has now written over forty performed plays (to his surprise), at first mainly in television, now mainly radio - entirely one offs and near exclusively biographical. Stephen was The Royal Literary Society Writer in Residence at universities in Leeds and Kent, 2009-12. Stephen has recently been Writer in Residence at St. Cuthbert’s Society, Durham University. While there he began writing the essays which constitute LIFE AFTER A HEART JOB. They were written at a time of uncertainty and are valedictory, he realises, and constitute a kind of rough autobiography of a writer’s life. Using the hyper-links they needn’t be read sequentially.
If autobiographical essays aren't to your taste, Stephen's 1989 film with the late Michael Williams and the Manchester Boys' Choir gives a snapshot of the author's experience of being a teenager at the time of the Beatles first LP. It's a kind of musical, only the music is church music - and Blackpool, its setting, has never looked so magical. View it here. Or Coppers - with Tim Roth when he came cheaper as an actor. Here. And recently surfaced is the Yorkshire TV film of Brother to the Ox. See here
A set of essays - Minority Report - is a (minor) writer at 70, attempting to take stock of his character, achievements and failings (always a favourite way of spending the time...).
July 2019: There's a new strand - 'Forty Years On' - letters to a school friend not seen for forty years - with the raw material for a great many of the essays on the site: first thoughts on a life lived. Joseph Conrad said that after 60 it was time to clear the decks and move down inside the ship. The letters are my deck clearing.
If autobiographical essays aren't to your taste, Stephen's 1989 film with the late Michael Williams and the Manchester Boys' Choir gives a snapshot of the author's experience of being a teenager at the time of the Beatles first LP. It's a kind of musical, only the music is church music - and Blackpool, its setting, has never looked so magical. View it here. Or Coppers - with Tim Roth when he came cheaper as an actor. Here. And recently surfaced is the Yorkshire TV film of Brother to the Ox. See here
A set of essays - Minority Report - is a (minor) writer at 70, attempting to take stock of his character, achievements and failings (always a favourite way of spending the time...).
July 2019: There's a new strand - 'Forty Years On' - letters to a school friend not seen for forty years - with the raw material for a great many of the essays on the site: first thoughts on a life lived. Joseph Conrad said that after 60 it was time to clear the decks and move down inside the ship. The letters are my deck clearing.