A memorial service will be held at Ripon Cathedral at 3pm on Tuesday for playwright and TV dramatist Ian Curteis, whose play about the 1982 Falklands conflict was at the centre of a BBC controversy.
Mr Curteis, who in 2001 married Lady Deirdre Hare, widow of the 7th Baron Grantley of Markenfield Hall, spent the latter years of his life focused on the conservation and restoration of the medieval building, which has been the Grantley family seat since the 13th Century. He died in November.
In 2008, he and Lady Deirdre, who described the moated hall as ‘the loveliest place you’ve never heard of’ won the first annual restoration award sponsored by Sotheby’s and the Historic Houses Association.
Better known to people who followed Mr Curteis’ writing rather than restoration activities, was his work on the BBC blockbuster drama series, The Onedin Line, for which he was commissioned to write a number of episodes.
Markenfield Hall.
His innovative approach saw him pioneer a new drama-documentary format for his play on the 1956 Suez crisis, broadcast by the BBC in 1979.
Mr Curteis used the same drama-documentary approach for a play about the Falklands War commissioned by the then BBC director-general Alasdair Milne in April 1983 — just a year after the conflict had started.
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However, The Falklands Play, which was for many years at the centre of a controversy involving claims of political bias and attempted censorship, was finally broadcast on BBC Four after a number of re-writes in April 2002.
In a less controversial arena, Mr Curteis wrote an adaptation of JB Priestley’s last novel Lost Empires for ITV and also adapted for broadcast by the BBC The Choir , a novel written by Joanna Trollope.
