Michael Frayn
Michael Frayn (born 8 September 1933) is an English playwright and novelist. He is mainly known as the author of the farce Noises Off and the straight plays Copenhagen and Democracy, as well as the Fleet Street satire Towards the End of the Morning.
Copenhagen concerned Danish physicist Niels Bohr and German scientist Werner Heisenberg, and is considered by many to be Frayn's finest work. His most recent novel, Spies, won the Whitbread Prize for Fiction in 2002.
He was educated at Kingston Grammar School and Cambridge University.
Frayn's most recent play Democracy was a huge success in London (National Theatre, 2003-4 and West End transfer), Copenhagen (Betty Nansen Teatret, 2004) and on Broadway (Brooks Atkinson Theatre, 2004-5); it dramatizes the story of German chancellor Willy Brandt and his personal assistant, the East German spy Günter Guillaume.
His other original plays include two evenings of short plays, The Two of Us and Alarms and Excursions, the philosopical comedies Alphabetical Order, Benefactors, Clouds, Make and Break and Here, and the farces Donkeys Years and Balmoral(aka Liberty Hall). He also wrote the screeplays for the film, Clockwise, starring John Cleese, and the TV series Making Faces, starring Elenor Bron.
He is also the author of a book of philosophy, Constructions, and a number of novels including Headlong, The Tin Men and Now You Know.
During his National Service, Frayn learned Russian at the Joint Services School for Linguists. He is now considered to be Britain's finest translator of Chekhov - adaptating the four major plays (The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard) as well as an early untitled work, which he titled Wild Honey (other translations of the work have called it Platanov or Don Juan in the Russian Manner) and a number of Chekhov's smaller plays for an evening called The Sneeze (orignally performed on the West End by Rowan Atkinson).
Frayn's wife is Claire Tomalin, the biographer and literary journalist.