Screenwriter, Author. Dennis Christopher George Potter was born at Brick House in the village of Berry Hill, in the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire. His father, Walter Potter, and his father's father were both coal miners ; his mother, Margaret (nee Wale) came from London, although her mother had been born in the Forest.

Dennis Potter was educated at Bell's Grammar School in Coleford, near his birthplace, and at St. Clement Dane's School in Hammersmith. After his National Service, which he spent in the War Office translating Russian documents, he obtained a State Scholarship to New College, Oxford, where he edited the magazine "Isis" and left in 1959 with a P.P.E. In the same year, he married Margaret Morgan, a girl from the Forest who was two years his senior. They were to have three children: Jane, Sarah, and Robert.

Over the next few years, Potter wrote articles for the newspapers and worked at the B.B.C, notably as one of the scriptwriters for "That Was the Week That Was." In the General Election of October 1964, he stood as the Labour candidate for East Hertfordshire. Although Labour won the election, Potter lost to Derek Walker-Smith (Con.)

In the following year, his first television play, "The Confidence Course", was broadcast. Over the next three decades, he was to write 28 plays for television, of which some of the best-known are: "Son of Man" about Jesus (1969); "Where Adam Stood" (1976), based on the life of Sir Edmund Gosse (q.v.); "Brimstone and Treacle" which was recorded in 1976 but was banned for nine years; and "Blue Remembered Hills" (1979). In addition, he wrote eleven serials for television, notably a trilogy, each of which consisted of six parts: "Pennies From Heaven" (1978), set in the 1930's ; "The Singing Detective" (1986), set in the forties; and "Lipstick On Your Collar" (1993), in the fifties. All of these were punctuated by appropriate music from the relevant decade. His other works included three novels, nine film scripts, and much journalism.

This output is even more remarkable when it is remembered that, in 1962, Potter had been diagnosed as suffering from psoriatic arthropathy, which affected his joints to the extent that, eventually, he was unable to use a typewriter and had to write with a pen strapped to his hand.

Towards the end of 1992, his wife Margaret was diagnosed with breast cancer, and he spent the next couple of years looking after her. However, on St. Valentine's Day 1994, he learned that he himself was suffering from inoperable cancer of the pancreas. He named his cancer "Rupert" after the press tycoon.

In the few months remaining to him, he managed to complete two further six-part serials, "Karaoke" and "Cold Lazarus", which were shown after his death, and to appear in a remarkable interview with Lord Bragg, the transcript of which has been published as "Seeing the Blossom."

Margaret Potter died on the 27th. May. Her husband was too ill to attend her funeral, and followed her eleven days later. The couple were cremated at Gloucester, and the plaque over their casket includes a line from the novel "Turtle Moon" by Alice Hoffman, which Mrs. Potter had liked very much. It appears as the epigraph of the book, and is credited to one Harvey Oxenberg (1951-1990). Screenwriter, Author. Dennis Christopher George Potter was born at Brick House in the village of Berry Hill, in the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire. His father, Walter Potter, and his father's father were both coal miners ; his mother, Margaret (nee Wale) came from London, although her mother had been born in the Forest.

Dennis Potter was educated at Bell's Grammar...