Death
Cooper died at the age of 48 after falling from a train as it passed through Surbiton, Surrey, returning from a Guild of Dramatists' Christmas dinner at the Garrick on 2 December 1966. A post-mortem showed he had consumed the equivalent of half a bottle of whisky and the coroner at Kingston in January 1967 returned a verdict of misadventure. There have been several attempts to attribute his death to suicide, notably by theatre journal The Stage, and when interviewed by Humphrey Carpenter in 1995, Douglas Cleverdon's widow Nest told him that she believed it was suicide. Cooper's family, understandably perhaps, have always strongly disputed this, not only because it bears no relationship to the playwright's apparent frame of mind during the period leading up to his death, but because it unfairly colours appraisal of his work from an academic standpoint.
Read more about this topic: Giles Cooper
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