Michael Frayn, FRSL is an English playwright and novelist.
13 Facts About Michael Frayn
Michael Frayn is best known as the author of the farce Noises Off and the dramas Copenhagen and Democracy.
Michael Frayn has written philosophical works, such as The Human Touch: Our Part in the Creation of the Universe.
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.
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'.
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.
Michael Frayn has written a book about philosophy, Constructions, and a book of his own philosophy, The Human Touch.
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.
Michael Frayn is considered to be Britain's finest translator of Anton Chekhov as well as an early untitled work, which he titled Wild Honey and a number of Chekhov's smaller plays for an evening called The Sneeze.
Michael Frayn translated Yuri Trifonov's play Exchange, Leo Tolstoy's The Fruits of Enlightenment, and Jean Anouilh's Number One.
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.
Michael Frayn's wife, Claire Tomalin, is a biographer and literary journalist.
Michael Frayn is an honorary associate of the National Secular Society, and declined a CBE and a Knighthood in 1989 and 2003 respectively.