James Brabazon worked in theatre and television, writing books and film scripts, as well as biographies of Dorothy L. Sayers and Albert Schweitzer.
He was born Leslie James Seth-Smith in Kampala, Uganda. When he was 5 his family returned to England, and he attended Uppingham and Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. Having been sent down for associating inappropriately with a member of the opposite sex, he moved to London, adopted a bohemian lifestyle and began acting. He worked at the Admiralty during the war.
It was Sayers who encouraged Brabazon to act professionally, and within a few years he was performing in repertory theatre all over the UK, living in a caravan with his wife, Marka, and a young family.
Settling in Finchley, North London, in 1956, he joined an advertising agency and wrote plays in his spare time. People of Nowhere, written for World Refugee Year in 1959, received critical acclaim. He spent most of the 1960s and 1970s script-editing, directing and producing for the BBC, Granada and LWT, being involved in such dramas as The Six Wives of Henry VIII, the “Childhood” series with the directors Michael Apted, Mike Newell and John Irvin, and Talking to a Stranger with Judi Dench.
The success of his biography of Sayers earned him a commission to write a biography of Schweitzer, the humanitarian and Nobel Peace Prize winner. Brabazon was much affected by Schweitzer’s philosophy of reverence for life, and he became actively involved with the charity Friends of Albert Schweitzer (UK).
Advertisement
In 1981 Brabazon, now with a second family to support, turned to film script-writing, generally choosing subjects which had a moral dimension. His Lost in Siberia was nominated for the 1991 Golden Globe award for Best Foreign Language Film.
James Brabazon, writer and producer, was born on January 12, 1923. He died on November 5, 2007, aged 84