Henry Livings

Henry George Livings (20 September 1929 – 20 February 1998) was an English playwright and screenwriter, who worked extensively in British theatre, radio and television from the 1950s to the 1980s. Starting as an actor, he was inspired by the dramatist Brendan Behan, whom he encountered while a member of the Theatre Workshop company in the mid-1950s, and began writing plays.

As a working-class Northerner he focused on characters from a similar background to his own and paid little attention to the traditional theatrical elements of plot and character development. He showed the English working class in humorous ways while celebrating them in ways that would bring laughter, without overlooking darker images. Believing that theatre audiences could not concentrate on a scene for more than a few minutes, Livings developed a personal technique of play construction: his plays often consist of seven-minute sections strung together, and a coherent continuous narrative dispensed with.

Life and career

Early years

Livings was born in Prestwich, Lancashire, on 20 September 1929, the son of George Livings (a shop manager) and his wife Dorothy née Buckley. He attended Park View Primary School from 1935 to 1939 and the Stand Grammar School from 1940 to 1945, where, according to his fellow dramatist Alan Plater, he enjoyed the learning but developed a lifelong contempt for the associated snobbery and elitism. He won a scholarship to the University of Liverpool, where from 1948 to 1950 he studied French and Spanish. After leaving the university without taking a degree he spent two years (1950 to 1952) doing his compulsory National Service in the Royal Air Force, during which time he served as a cook. Before going into the theatre Livings held various jobs.