Michael Frayn, FRSL is an English playwright and novelist.
15 Facts About Michael Frayn
1.
2.
Michael Frayn has written philosophical works, such as The Human Touch: Our Part in the Creation of the Universe.
3.
Michael Frayn was born at Mill Hill, north London, to Thomas Allen Michael Frayn, an asbestos salesman from a working-class family of blacksmiths, locksmiths and servants and his wife Violet Alice.
4.
Michael Frayn then worked as a reporter and columnist for The Guardian and The Observer, where he established a reputation as a satirist and comic writer, and began publishing his plays and novels.
5.
Michael Frayn was attracted to the topic because it seemed to 'encapsulate something about the difficulty of knowing why people do what they do and there is a parallel between that and the impossibility that Heisenberg established in physics, about ever knowing everything about the behaviour of physical objects'.
6.
Michael Frayn's novels include Headlong, The Tin Men, The Russian Interpreter, Towards the End of the Morning, Sweet Dreams, A Landing on the Sun, A Very Private Life, Now You Know and Skios.
7.
Michael Frayn has written a book about philosophy, Constructions, and a book of his own philosophy, The Human Touch.
8.
Michael Frayn has written screenplays for the films Clockwise, starring John Cleese, First and Last starring Tom Wilkinson, Birthday, Jamie on a Flying Visit, and the TV series Making Faces, starring Eleanor Bron.
9.
Michael Frayn is considered to be Britain's finest translator of Anton Chekhov, including an early untitled work, which he titled Wild Honey.
10.
From four of Chekhov's short stories and four of his one-act plays Michael Frayn devised The Sneeze.
11.
Michael Frayn has translated Yuri Trifonov's play Exchange, Leo Tolstoy's The Fruits of Enlightenment, and Jean Anouilh's Number One.
12.
In 1980, Michael Frayn presented the Australian journey of the BBC television series Great Railway Journeys of the World.
13.
Michael Frayn's journey took him from Sydney to Perth on the Indian Pacific, with side visits to the Lithgow Zig Zag and a journey on The Ghan's old route from Marree to Alice Springs shortly before the opening of the new line from Tarcoola to Alice Springs.
14.
Michael Frayn has three daughters with his first wife, Gillian Palmer: Rebecca, a documentary film maker, writer and actress; Susanna; and Jenny, a television producer.
15.
Michael Frayn is an honorary associate of the National Secular Society, and declined a CBE and a knighthood in 1989 and 2003 respectively.