Sir Alan Ayckbourn

Ayckbourn was born in London, and his parents divorced when he was still a child. He left school at the age of 17, as was common for working-class English teenagers in the 1950s. He got married at the age of 18, and took a job at the Scarborough Library Theater, which helped encourage him to write and produce plays. He succeeded in getting several plays produced in the West End in the early 1960s, including Mr. Whatnot. However, this play was a flop. Ayckbourn’s first major success was Relatively Speaking, which made him a rich man. In the 1970s, Ayckbourn was at the height of his powers, with three back-to-back hit plays, all of which dealt with the plight of the British middle class. Ayckbourn was knighted in 1997, and to this day he enjoys a stellar reputation in the British theater world, though he’s relatively unknown outside of his own country.