Cecil Philip Taylor

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Cecil Philip Taylor (1929 - 1981) was a twentieth-century British playwright.

Cecil was born in Glasgow, came to Newcastle upon Tyne, the city where his mother had grown up, in 1955, and lived at 30 Lindale Road, Fenham, for many years.

Taylor left school at 14 and worked in various odd jobs before moving into journalism, and then onto playwrighting. His plays tended to draw on his Jewish background and his Marxist (or at least Socialist) viewpoint, and to be written in dialect.

His first play was Aa Went to Blaydon Races (1962), while Peter Pan Man transfers J. M. Barrie’s play to an Elswick estate. The Live Theatre in Newcastle premiered his Bandits (1977) which was also performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company.

His most successful work was probably Good (1981), in which a liberal German professor Halder whose moral cowardice and subtle corruption leads to his involvement with the Nazi war machine and Auschwitz, in the world of the Third Reich (the title is of course ironic: Halder always see himself as a 'good man' even as he is drawn further and further into Hitler's nightmare). The play titled 'Good' is frequently revived, most recently at the Donmar Warehouse Theater in London with Charles Dance in the leading role. Good (film) is currently being filmed, with Viggo Mortensen in the role of Halder along with Jason Isaacs. It is due for release in 2008.

The Tyne-Tees production of And a Nightingale Sang, a bitter-sweet comedy set on wartime Tyneside, won a Prix Europa in 1990. Taylor’s drama has also featured as a central theme of the Edinburgh Festival. He was the founding father of the Northern Playwrights Society (which still flourishes).

Taylor lived in various parts of Northumberland with his second wife, eventually settling in Longhorsely. His untimely death from pneumonia has been attributed to his habit of writing in his garden shed.