Author David Halliwell dies aged 69 (From Witney Gazette)

Author David Halliwell dies aged 69

3:16pm Monday 27th March 2006 in Witney By Rosalind Miles

AN eccentric dramatist and director who lived in Charlbury has died.

David Halliwell, who was 69 when he died on March 16, was most famous for writing the highly-acclaimed and ground-breaking play Little Malcolm and his Struggle Against the Eunuchs.

Mike Leigh directed the six-hour play in 1965 at London's Unity Theatre, and Mr Halliwell went on to write other plays and episodes of Dr Who and The Bill.

He was recognised by critics as a visionary, and developed multi-view point drama, showing incidents from the perspective of each of the characters involved.

Mike Leigh described Mr Halliwell as a loner.

Mr Leigh told The Guardian newspaper: "He lived alone and, typically, it seems, he died alone.

"Nothing he wrote had the weight or depth of which he was undoubtedly capable, and nobody who knew him or his wit, intelligence, or indeed his writing would disagree that he could and should have been up there with Beckett and Pinter, his two major influences.

Friend Igor Goldkind, of Charlbury, said: "He was certainly the most extraordinary resident of Charlbury I have ever met. He was a living, breathing poet and dramatist of great, but largely unrecognized and unrewarded talent.

"Not only was he once great friends with the Nobel Prize laureate Harold Pinter, he worked with John Lennon, and crossed whisky-fuelled swords with Samuel Beckett, amongst many other luminaries of British drama.

"He was a very complex and talented man. His work is a piece of history of this country and part of the cultural heritage of Britain."

Freddie Jones, a Charlbury actor, who plays in Emmerdale, said: "He was a very private person. He never talked about his work. He wrote the Hub of Synchronicity because of the extraordinary things that co-existed in Charlbury above all imagined probabilities. I went along, and all at once I'm in it. He was very eccentric."

A memorial service for Mr Halliwell is to be held in Charlbury Corner House on Friday March 31, from 4pm to 6pm. Mike Leigh is expected to attend.