Synopsis
Dennis Potter was a most remarkable, idiosyncratic, and influential screen playwright, writing such shows as "The Singing Detective" and "Pennies from Heaven" for British TV during the last half of the 20th century. A coalminer's son who won a scholarship to Oxford, he traversed the distance from a fundamentalist working class background to a self-reflexive, postmodern life in and behind the media spotlight. In dramatizing the anxiety of his own inner journey, he articulated for the millions watching their own distresses about the fast changing cultural environment. Potter not only reflected the uneasiness brought about by the "loss of foundations", he had a sense of vocation, a "calling" to provide new guidelines and directions to his viewers and readers. "The Passion of Dennis Potter" represents the first collection of international essays on this celebrated playwright. Along with essays from the world's scholars and experts on Potter, there are personal memoirs from friends and colleagues who knew and worked with him.
The result is a collection which dissects the themes and oeuvre of one of the major contemporary figures of British drama and literature, tracing his changing class, religious, and personal values from his debut in 1965 right up to his death from cancer in 1994.
