12 Facts About Alan Seymour

Alan Seymour was an Australian playwright and author.

Alan Seymour is best known for the play The One Day of the Year.

Alan Seymour's father was killed in a wharf accident when Alan was nine, and his mother, a Cockney from London, died a few months later.

Alan Seymour was educated at Perth Modern School, leaving at 15 after failing to complete the Junior Certificate.

Alan Seymour found work as a radio announcer in a commercial radio station 6PM.

Alan Seymour returned to Perth after the war where he worked as a free-lance writer for ABC Radio.

Alan Seymour joined a commercial radio station 6KY as an announcer and copy-writer and after six months was offered an announcing post at the ABC.

In November 1949, Seymour returned to Sydney where he became an educational and freelance drama writer for ABC Radio and later television.

Alan Seymour's first play, Swamp Creatures, premiered by the Canberra Repertory Society, was a finalist in the London Observer play competition in 1957.

Alan Seymour left Australia in 1961 and worked in London as a television writer, producer and commissioning editor with the BBC, and as a theatre critic for The London Magazine.

Alan Seymour won a BAFTA Award for his 1984 adaptation of John Masefield's novel The Box of Delights.

Alan Seymour was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia in 2007, and died in an aged care facility in Elizabeth Bay in 2015, aged 87.