Alan Ayckbourn

Grinning at the Edge

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by Paul Allen

Continuum Publishing

Due/Published October 2003, 352 pages, paper

ISBN 0826415377

In this first full and authorized biography, Paul Allen explores Ayckbourn's family background, looking at his unsettled and sometimes solitary childhood. There follows a hasty first marriage, the often farcical life of a frustrated young actor, and the setbacks and false dawns endured by the novice writer before he became the great comic hitmaker of the 1970s.

Alan Ayckbourn is Britain's most popular playwright and its most private. He has won numerous awards for his plays - including Absurd Person Singular, The Norman Conquests, Just Between Ourselves, A Chorus of Disapproval. Feted from London to New York to Tokyo, he was knighted in 1997 for his services to the theatre.