11 Facts About James Bridie

James Bridie was the pseudonym of a Scottish playwright, screenwriter and physician whose real name was Osborne Henry Mavor.

James Bridie took his pen-name from his paternal grandfather's first name and his grandmother's maiden name.

James Bridie was the son of Henry Alexander Mavor, an electrical engineer and industrialist, and his wife Janet Osborne.

James Bridie went to school at Glasgow Academy and then studied medicine at the University of Glasgow graduating in 1913, later becoming a general practitioner, then consultant physician and professor after serving as a military physician during World War I, seeing service in France and Mesopotamia.

James Bridie came to prominence with his comic play The Anatomist, about the grave robbers Burke and Hare.

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James Bridie returned to the army during World War II, again serving as a physician.

James Bridie was the founder of the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow, in association with joint founders art director Dr Tom Honeyman and cinema magnate George Singleton, who created the Cosmo, predecessor of today's Glasgow Film Theatre.

Tony Paterson has argued that James Bridie's output set the tone for Scottish Theatre until the early Nineteen-Sixties and gave encouragement to other Scottish dramatists such as Robert Kemp, Alexander Reid and George Munro.

Alan Riach described James Bridie's plays as both serious and offering 'high spirited fun'; both contemporarily 'commercially successful' and yet 'perennially provocative'; raising open questions that Riach considers as Brechtian.

James Bridie was the first chairman of the Arts Council in Scotland and was instrumental in the establishment of the Edinburgh Festival.

James Bridie worked with the director Alfred Hitchcock in the late 1940s.