My friend and colleague Adrian Flynn, who has died aged 66 after suffering a stroke, was a playwright, a novelist and a scriptwriter for The Archers. Adrian was a brilliant writer, capable of great power and immense sensitivity in his storytelling, as his many plays, novelisations and hundreds of episodes of The Archers attest. A team player in a singular profession, he left his mark on everyone who knew him.
Born in Purley, Surrey, Adrian was the youngest child of Bridget (nee McLindon) and William Flynn, who both served in the second world war; his mother then became a housewife and his father a printer who was later made a freeman of the City of London. A Catholic by upbringing, Adrian went to school at St Joseph’s college, London, before rejecting all religious belief at 16. From 1977 to 1979, after studying philosophy at Newcastle University, he travelled to India and, on his return to the UK, worked as a loft insulator, nursing assistant and barman.
