Ken Whitmore worked as a journalist for 20 years before turning to fiction. He is the author of 40 plays for BBC Radios 3, 4 and 5, adaptations of works by Gogol, Graham Greene, Howard Spring, Henry James and Lydia Chukovskaya, seven stage plays, the children’s novel Jump!, published by Oxford University Press, and many stories and poems.
 He has won the Giles Cooper Award for Best Radio Plays of the Year, the Arnold Bennett Short Story Prize and the Times/Jonathan Cape Children’s Story Competition. His work is included in various school and university textbooks and literary anthologies.
What the critics have said about Ken Whitmore and his work:
“The excellent Ken Whitmore - that master
of north country black humour.”
Val Arnold-Forster, The Guardian.
“A comic ingenuity worthy of vintage Wodehouse.”
Richard Last, Daily Telegraph.
“Delicious, inventive and entertaining.”
Charles Causley, The Times
“Preposterously entertaining."
Times Educational Supplement
“His play Jump! is one of the most
imaginative scripts I have ever worked on.”
Alfred Bradley, Senior Drama Producer, BBC Radio
“Style, wit and density enough
to entertain everyone.”
Time Out
“Has all the ingredients of real excellence - originality of plot, vividness of characterisation but above all that assuredness of touch in the writing which is so difficult to define but so readily recognised when it appears on the page.”
Gerald Haigh, Times Educational Supplement.
“Ken Whitmore’s La Bolshie Vita at Birmingham Rep is delighting audiences with its witty and scathing look at the Communist State.”
Birmingham Daily News.
“Hairs on the back of my neck prickled and goose pimples tingled up and down my arms. Several times people in the audience actually screamed and nervous laughter hissed out as tension momentarily sagged. Responding so physically to a play means both play and director are powerful and skilful.” Francesca Turner, The Stage.
“Dangerously clever ... a winner.”
Deborah Pickering, Financial Times.
You can e-mail me at ken@writing-coach.co.uk |
