Burnt by the Sun

Peter Flannery was writer in residence at the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1979-1980. His plays first staged by the RSC include Singer, which originally starred Antony Sher, and won the Time Out Best Play Award in 1989, and was subsequently revived by the Oxford Stage Company in 2004, starring Ron Cook; Our Friends in the North, winner of the 1982 John Whiting Award; Savage Amusement, which won the Best Play Award at the National Student Drama Festival, 1978. Other theatre includes The Bodies, adapted from Émile Zola’s Thérèse Raquin for Live Theatre, Newcastle, in 2005. Television and film work includes The Devil’s Whore (Channel 4, 2008); George Gently, adapted from the novels by Alan Hunter (BBC One, 2007); The One and Only (Pathé, 2003); Our Friends in the North (BBC Two, 1996), based on his original stage play, winner of the Writers’ Guild Award for Best Original Drama Serial, the Broadcasting Press Guild Award for Writer of the Year, the BAFTA for Best Drama Serial and the Royal Television Society Writers’ Award; Funny Bones with Peter Chelsom (Hollywood Pictures, 1995); Shoot the Revolution (BBC Two, 1990); and Blind Justice (BBC Two, 1988), winner of the Royal Television Society Award for Best Series and the Samuel Beckett Award.

'A cracker... starts out like something by Chekhov and ends up as a gripping Stalinist thriller... Funny, affecting and taut with suspense, Burnt by the Sun is a new play that already feels like a classic'