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.
He gained a PGCE in 1980, completing a probationary year of teaching in 1982. Adrian lived in Sheffield at the time, but his first job as a drama teacher was in Doncaster, at Danum comprehensive school, in 1984. Three years later he obtained a post as drama teacher at Baysgarth school, in Barton-upon-Humber, where he became head of department. In 1989, the year he moved to Hull, he met Gloria Metcalf through friends and a mutual love of drama. They married in 1995.
Adrian started writing sketches and plays in the 80s, including Huesca, a Spanish civil war drama intended to raise funds to help to take emergency medical supplies out to war-torn Nicaragua in 1986. It was later performed at the Peace Play festival in Hull.
In 1989, Adrian won a short-story competition and gave up teaching to write full-time. An early success was being commissioned by the OUP to adapt The Demon Headmaster by Gillian Cross. The play has since been performed in schools and theatres around the world.
Another big step forward was winning the WH Smith Plays for Children Award in 1994 for Burning Everest, in which a boy in care fantasises about leading an expedition up Everest. He went on to write many more original plays and adaptations for young adults, including The White Rose and the Swastika in 2007, about a student resistance group in Nazi Germany, and The Brotherhood of Smoke in 2017, a criminal caper set in Victorian London.
Adrian started on The Archers in 1998 and was a core member of the writing team for nearly a quarter of a century, greatly enriching the programme with his wry humour, deft characterisation, and deep knowledge of the countryside and wildlife.
An avid birdwatcher, he took great delight in spotting all 59 native species of British butterfly. He also enjoyed kayaking, and was a volunteer for the Samaritans and at a local hospice.
Gloria survives him, along with his stepchildren, Claire and Paul, three grandchildren, and his brothers, Kevin and Gerard.
