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Potter's most highly regarded works from this period were the semi-autobiographical plays Stand Up, Nigel Barton! and Vote, Vote, Vote for Nigel Barton, which featured Keith Barron. The former recounts the experience of a miner's son attending Oxford University where he finds himself torn between two worlds, culminating in Barton's participation in a television documentary. This mirrored Potter's participation in Does Class Matter (1958), a television documentary made while Potter was an Oxford undergraduate. [16] The second play features the same character standing as a Labour candidate—his disillusionment with the compromises of electoral politics is based on Potter's own experience. [17] Both plays received praise from critics but aroused considerable tension at the BBC for their potentially incendiary critique of party politics. [17] In his James MacTaggart Memorial Lecture in 1993, Potter recalled how he was asked by "several respected men at the corporation why I wanted to shit on the Queen." [18] First film screenplays [ edit ] There are some dated bits of satire on 'youth speak' that seems to come from a decade or two before the story, and the emotionless sex with multiple partners seems very pre-Aids though the novel was published in 1987. Potter, Dennis (September 2015). "Note 336". The Art of Invective: Selected Non-Fiction 1953–94. Oberon Books. ISBN 978-1-78319-203-8. Lccn 88040204 Ocr ABBYY FineReader 8.0 Ocr_converted abbyy-to-hocr 1.1.20 Ocr_module_version 0.0.16 Openlibrary_edition Between 1953 and 1955, his national service was in the Intelligence Corps of the British Army [4] and he learned Russian at the Joint Services School for Linguists. [5] Having won a State Scholarship to New College, Oxford, [6] [7] he studied philosophy, politics and economics. [8] Early career [ edit ]

Potter stood as the Labour Party candidate for Hertfordshire East, a safe Conservative Party seat, in the 1964 general election against the incumbent Derek Walker-Smith. By the end of the unsuccessful campaign, he claimed that he was so disillusioned with party politics he did not even vote for himself. Potter now embarked on work as a television playwright. He had begun to suffer in 1962 from a condition known as psoriatic arthropathy causing arthritis to develop in his joints as well as affecting his skin with psoriasis. It also made futile any attempt to follow a conventional career path. Bennett, Alan (21 January 1999). "What I did in 1998". London Review of Books. 21 (2) . Retrieved 10 October 2020.Dennis Potter: An Unconventional Dramatist" (PDF). New College, Oxford . Retrieved 7 December 2021.

The most prolific yet also most controversial of television playwrights, he remains the undisputed figurehead of that peculiarly British phenomenon of writers who make it their passion to show that television can be just as powerful a vehicle for artistic expression as cinema or theatre.Brown, Mark (3 August 2018). "Dennis Potter's adaptation of The White Hotel to premiere on Radio 4". The Guardian . Retrieved 3 August 2018. Dennis Christopher George Potter (17 May 1935– 7 June 1994) was an English television dramatist, screenwriter and journalist. He is best known for his BBC television serials Pennies from Heaven (1978) and The Singing Detective (1986) as well as the BBC television plays Blue Remembered Hills (1979) and Brimstone and Treacle (1976). [1] His television dramas mixed fantasy and reality, the personal and the social, and often used themes and images from popular culture. Potter is widely regarded as one of the most influential and innovative dramatists to have worked in British television. The story's typical of the author's work, which is to say it's a complex arrangement of layers presented in an unconventional, creative manner; a non-linear narrative that ebbs and flows; a sensual tide that takes as much as it gives. Potter's career in the early 1980s was spent as a screenwriter for the cinema. He returned to the BBC for a co-production with 20th Century Fox, writing the scripts for a widely praised but seldom-seen miniseries of F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender Is the Night (1985) with Mary Steenburgen as Nicole Diver.

Although Potter won few awards, he was and remains held in high regard by many within the television and film industry and was an influence on such creators as Mark Frost, Steven Bochco, Andrew Davies, Alain Resnais and Peter Bowker. [40] [41] [42] [43] [44] Alan Bennett was critical, referring in his 1998 diaries to a television programme "that took Potter at his own self-evaluation (always high), when there was a good deal of indifferent stuff which was skated over", and believed that Potter's health was a factor in his fame, saying "he visibly conformed to what the public thinks artists ought to be—poor or promiscuous, suffering or starved". [45] [46] BBC Four marked the tenth anniversary of Potter's death in December 2004 with documentaries about his life and work, accompanied by showings of Pennies from Heaven and The Singing Detective, as well as several of his single plays—many of which had not been shown since their initial broadcast. [47] Potter's papers, including unproduced plays and unpublished fiction, are being catalogued and preserved at the Dean Heritage Centre in Gloucestershire. [48] Personal life [ edit ]

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In 1961, while covering a meeting of the Young Conservatives, Potter was suddenly unable to rise from the press table and his knee felt hot. He was taken to a hospital, where his other joints blew up, also, and his skin scalded off his body overnight. Potter was diagnosed with psoriatic arthropathy. [49]

Potter married Margaret Amy Morgan (14 August 1933 – 29 May 1994) on 10 January 1959, at the Christ Church parish church in Berry Hill. They lived at Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire, and had three children, Robert, Jane, and Sarah. [5] Illness and death [ edit ] Dennis Christopher George Potter (17 May 1935 – 7 June 1994) was an English dramatist, best known for The Singing Detective (1986). His widely acclaimed television dramas mixed fantasy and reality, the personal and the social. He was particularly fond of using themes and images from popular culture. Such was his reputation that he convinced BBC 2 and Channel 4 to co-operate in screening his final two works, written in the months he was aware of his impending death.Michael Billington and Dennis Potter "Dennis Potter: there is a nostalgic, right wing impulse in England", The Guardian, 2015 (reprint of 1979 radio interview)