Masterclass Diary

4 May 2007

Andrew Davies, Writer

FREE
6.30
Business Centre
CCI, University of Glamorgan

The M.Phil. in Writing presents an evening with:_
With the support of Yr Academi
ANDREW DAVIES

Ripping bodices, heaving bosoms, bopping in breeches and cavorting in carriages - it's all in a day's work for Andrew Davies, British television's acknowledged master of literary adaptation.

The screenplays of Pride and Prejudice, Middlemarch, Vanity Fair, Wives and Daughters and Tipping the Velvet have all come from his pen. In fact, last year, this classical colossus bestrode the networks and almost entered a ratings battle with himself, when the BBC's Daniel Deronda was, until the visceral over the intellectual

Born in Cardiff to two schoolteachers, Davies has spent much of his own career in the classroom, and was still lecturing at Warwick University when the success of his campus satire, A Very Peculiar Practice, convinced him to take up writing full time in 1986.

Many television adaptations have appeared since with his name in the credits, and much of his popularity can be explained by the writer's skill in interpreting the classics. He is, clearly, a master of the art of adaptation.

The most celebrated of these is still the moment that Colin Firth claimed victory in the all-Pemberley wet frilly-shirt competition and burst the bubble of sexual tension between his Darcy and Jennifer Ehle's Miss Bennett. One set of American women became so addicted to this scene, they ended up forming a self-help group (transAtlantic urban myth?).

Andrew Davies claims that he is writing in the gaps that earlier authors were forced to leave out by the delicate conventions of their time. He may have mastered the art of adaptation, but Davies remains equally confident that "these authors would have made their sex scenes much clearer, had they known they were going to be read in 2007".

You’ve quite possibly just enjoyed Persuasion last week on ITV, so colleagues and students are encouraged to come and meet one of the most influential writers of our time.