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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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Dennis Potter
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(b. 1935) Television dramatist with a wide-ranging output. Two early plays (Vote Vote Vote for Nigel Barton and Stand Up Nigel Barton, both 1965) were autobiographical – about a working-class Oxford graduate attempting to make a career in left-wing politics. Blue Remembered Hills (1979) achieved a disturbing dislocation by casting adult actors as a group of children playing together during World War II. *Pennies from Heaven, The *Singing Detective and Lipstick on Your Collar (1993) are ambitious and lengthy exercises in a technique which he has made very much his own, with cheerful popular music erupting within fairly bleak drama.
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After suffering for more than 30 years from an extremely painful condition (psoriatic arthropathy), he eventually died of cancer; and typically he turned his last few months into a creative bargain with death, pacing himself with pain-killing drugs to complete two final television series (Karaoke for the BBC and Cold Lazarus for Channel 4), and recording a brave 90-minute interview with Melvyn Bragg for Without Walls, in which his predicament gave his words a force unusual even for him.
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