Catalogue description The Kevin Laffan Archive

Kevin Laffan (1922-2003) was a playwright and scriptwriter, probably best known as the creator, in 1972, of ‘Emmerdale Farm’, the ITV soap opera, for which he wrote 262 episodes.

The catalogue comprises a box list subdivided into different categories for novels, plays, press cuttings and correspondence relating to Laffan's stage plays and press cuttings and correspondence relating to his television work and novels.

Laffan, Kevin (1922-2003), playwright and screenwriter

• 20th century drama
• theatre

Catalogue available via: https://archives.le.ac.uk/CalmView/Record.aspx?src=CalmView.Catalog&id=00049

Kevin Barry Laffan (24 May 1922 - 11 March 2003) was a playwright and scriptwriter, probably best known as the creator, in 1972, of ‘Emmerdale Farm’, the ITV soap opera, for which he wrote 262 episodes. However, he saw himself as ‘a playwright at heart’ and wrote numerous plays for theatre and fringe theatre. He married Jeanne Thompson, with whom he had three sons. An actor since the age of 14, Laffan helped found the Everyman Theatre Company in Reading in 1953, becoming its artistic director until 1958, when he left to concentrate on his writing. His television play, ‘Cut in Ebony’, won an ATV award in 1959, but was never produced, because its subject matter, issues surrounding race and colour, was deemed too controversial for audiences at that time. In 1968, he experienced his first major success with the play ‘Zoo Zoo Widdershins Zoo’, which won the award for best new drama at the NUS Drama Festival. This study of the lifestyle of a group of young squatters was originally presented by students from the University of Leicester, and was subsequently staged at the Nottingham Playhouse and the Edinburgh Festival. Laffan went on to write ‘It’s a Two-Foot-Six-Inches-above-the-Ground World’, which was originally performed by the Old Vic Theatre Company in Bristol, before transferring to the Wyndham’s Theatre in the West End, where it was a critical and commercial success. In 1973, it was made into a feature film, under the revised title of ‘The Love Ban’. Its theme of the effects on a young husband and wife of the Catholic Church’s stance on birth control was revisited in many of Laffan’s later works. In 1968, Laffan received the Irish Life Drama Award for ‘The Superannuated Man’, which was subsequently staged at the Palace Theatre, Watford, with Margot Leicester in the cast. During the 1970s and 1980s, Laffan established himself as a screenwriter, scripting ‘Bud’, a six-part series for the music-hall comedian Bud Flanagan and a screenplay starring Anthony Hopkins entitled ‘Decision to Burn’. ‘The Best Pair of Legs in the Business’, with Reg Varney as an ageing holiday camp drag artist, received acclaim from both Harold Pinter and John Osborne. In 1972 he was approached by Yorkshire Television to write a lunch-time farming serial, to be aired twice a week. Against the advice of his agent, he agreed and wrote ‘a 26-episode play’, leaving the ending open, so that it could continue. His other television successes included ‘Beryl’s Lot’, a comedy-drama inspired by the real-life story of the novelist Margaret Powell, ‘Kate’ starring Phyllis Calvert as an agony aunt, some episodes of ‘Justice’ featuring Margaret Lockwood as barrister Harriet Peterson, and the sitcom ‘I Thought You’d Gone’ with Peter Jones.