C.P. (Cecil Philip) Taylor, author of more than 70 plays, was born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1929. Married and father of four children, he spent his last 20 years in Northumberland, in Newcastle-on-Tyne. There he wrote many plays for young audiences and was closely associated with the Live Theatre Company for which he wrote And a Nightingale Sang (1977). About his writing, Taylor said, "[My] main themes are the conflicts between man's ideals and his limitations. Every play is about particular people, particular periods, particular incidents. The universal comes from a close and accurate study of the particular." His longtime friend Max Roberts, artistic director of the Live Theatre Company, wrote of him: "Whatever the subject matter, all the plays he wrote contained a basic 'truth' or something he unearthed that was 'real,' however small or seemingly inconsequential. Add to this an enormous 'worry' about the human race, a gifted instinct to make sense of the absurdities, cruelty and humor of its people, a total inability to write anything shallow or transparent, and you have a very special playwright ... he left behind him not only a fantastically diverse canon of work but a constant reminder of what was possible in the past and a stimulus for achievement in the future." In 1981, C.P. Taylor died suddenly at the age of 52.
