Peter Gill, who has died aged 86, was a rarity in British theatre in being an accomplished director of his own plays; he wrote them, you felt, mainly so that he could also direct them and thus maintain the vision and the poetry of his writing in their physical manifestation.
His reputation as a meticulous realist with unimpeachable good taste in casting was forged at the Royal Court in London where, in 1968, he made his name overnight by directing a trilogy of virtually unknown plays by DH Lawrence. For the first time, said Christopher Hampton, the novelist was revealed as “one of the alarmingly few really interesting early 20th-century stage writers”.
