On a regional tour earlier this year, the reaction to his play took Hugh Whitemore by surprise. "I'd never had a response like it, I had some extraordinary letters, including one from a Catholic priest, who said how good it was to find someone writing about the nature of faith. In Bath one of Derek's speeches drew a round of applause, which is unheard of these days.

"There does seem to be something in it which stirs the audience into some kind of participation. You always long to send people out of the theatre talking about the play, not thinking about where they are going to eat. There is nothing worse than coming away from the theatre feeling indifferent..."

Whitemore has been writing plays and films for nearly thirty years, having originally trained as an actor at RADA, along side Tom Courtney, Sian Phillips and Susannah York. "I did a summer season at the Floral Pavillion, Sidmouth and rep in Colchester, then I packed it in. I really was a very bad actor."

Instead he joined Associated Rediffusion as a continuity scriptwriter, writing the announcer's links between programmes. "Jack Rosenthal and Tony Warren did the same thing at Granada, and we used to ring each other up and say, 'God, if only we were real writers!'

In 1963 he sold his first play to BBC television and it was seen by the celebrated agent, Peggy Ramsey, who persuaded him to give up the day job and become a full-time writer. He survived eighteen years with Ramsey.

When his first stage play, Stevie, opened at the Vaudeville in 1977, she left him a note at the stage door saying. "As you know, I think your play is worthless, but I'm sure the critics will like it." Her verdict on Pack Of Lies, a great success for Judy Dench and Michael Williams in 1983, was "total rubbish...I can't do anything with it."
When he'd finally had enough, Ramsey never spoke to him again and pretended to his friend Peter Nichols, when once enquiring after Whitemore, that she didn't know who he was talking about.

Though he has not enjoyed the kind of international acclaim of Tom Stoppard or David Hare, Whitemore is happiest at soldiering away at his desk, away from the limelight. "Christpher Morahan once said to me that the great thing about not being fashhionable is that you can never become unfashionable." I do not think of writing as a private function. I enjoy my anonymity. I get very nervous about going on the radio or tv, and I can't bear reading things about myself."

At 64 he is busier than ever, with three film projects on the go, and the prospect of another play next year. "The ideas still keep coming. Thank God. I'd be lost without it. What would I do if I wasn't a writer? I suppose I'd retire to the country and run a second-hand bookshop. I can see myself sitting at a roll-top desk , with soup stains on my jacket being grumpy with all the customers. It wasn't for nothing that they thought I was the right person to write the screenplay for 84 Charing Cross Road."

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