Patrick Garland - Career

Career

Garland was educated at St Mary's College, Southampton and St Edmund Hall, Oxford where he studied English and was president of the Oxford University Dramatic Society.b His poetry had appeared in John Lehmann's London magazine and the annual PEN anthology during his teens.

His appearances as an actor included An Age of Kings, where he played Prince John in Henry IV, Part 2 and Clarence in Richard III, among others.

Garland started Poetry International in 1963 with Ted Hughes and Charles Osborne. He was a director and producer for the BBC's Music and Arts Department (1962–1974), and worked on its Monitor series. In 1964, he directed the Monitor film, "Down Cemetery Road," about Philip Larkin, in which John Betjeman also appeared. His work with the BBC arts department also included interviews with Noël Coward (1969), Stevie Smith, and Marcel Marceau. His television film of The Snow Goose (1971) won a Golden Globe for "Best Movie made for TV," and was nominated for both a BAFTA and an Emmy.

Meanwhile his career in the theatre had begun to develop. In 1967 he created a one man show based on John Aubrey's Brief Lives with Roy Dotrice (and Michael Williams in a later revival) and the following year directed the original production of Alan Bennett's Forty Years On with John Gielgud as the headmaster of a decaying public school called Albion House. In the mid-1970s, the musical Billy, based on Billy Liar, with Michael Crawford in the lead was performed at Drury Lane, He served as the Artistic Director for the Chichester Festival Theatre twice, 1981–1985 and 1990–1994, where he directed over 20 productions. He was the only director to have had four plays running in the West End of London at the same time.

In 1978 Patrick directed Under the Greenwood Tree at Salisbury Playhouse. This production transferred to the Vaudeville Theatre in the Strand London West End in the spring of 1979. In 1980, Garland was responsible for the York Mystery Plays. He directed the revival of My Fair Lady on Broadway in the early 1980s with Rex Harrison (about whom he wrote The Incomparable Rex) and Don Giovanni and in Japan, Handel's opera Ottone. He also directed Eileen Atkins in his own adaptation of Virginia Woolf's book A Room of One's Own.

In 2000, he directed Simon Callow in The Mystery of Charles Dickens by Peter Ackroyd, followed by a tour that culminated in Australia and Broadway (the 2012 revival did not directly involve Garland), and Joan Collins in Full Circle by Alan Melville. He also worked with Alan Bennett again, directing Patricia Routledge in the second Talking Heads and Bennett himself in Telling Tales.

He directed the film of Ibsen's A Doll's House (1973) with Claire Bloom, Anthony Hopkins and Ralph Richardson, and his 1971 television film of The Snow Goose won Golden Globe: "Best Movie made for TV" and was nominated for both a BAFTA award and an Emmy. He directed Fanfare for Elizabeth at Covent Garden on Queen Elizabeth II's 60th Birthday, and in 1986 at Westminster Abbey Celebration of a Broadcaster of the late Richard Dimbleby. 1989 he directed the Thanksgiving Service in Westminster Abbey for Lord Olivier. He has also devised and presented several performances for the Charleston Festival.

Garland was married to the actress Alexandra Bastedo from 1980. He was awarded Honoaray D Litt at the University of Southampton 1994 and an Honorary Fellow of St Edmund Hall, Oxford in 1997.