Born in Newcastle in 1922, Allan Prior was a British television and radio screenwriter and novelist. He wrote 20 novels, 50 original TV plays, 70 radio plays and 250 television episodes from the 1950s onwards. He was a founding writer of the BBC’s seminal TV police drama “Z-Cars” with Troy Kennedy Martin. He wrote five of the first ten episodes and more than 80 scripts during the programme’s 16-year run . He went on to write 37 episodes of the Z Cars spin-off serve , “Softly Softly”, which ran for ten years from 1966. He also wrote several episodes of the popular BBC drama series Dr Finlay’s casebook ( 1965-67). In the seventies he wrote episodes of popular television series such as “Blake’s 7” , “The Onedin Line” and “The Sweeny” . Along with producer Gerard Glaister he co-created the BBC drama series Howard’s Way in 1985. He wrote several plays for ITV’s “Armchair Theatre”. Later works include “The Charmer” in 1987 and in 1991 “A Perfect Hero”. In 1995 his radio play Führer was BBC ’Radio 4’ s flagship drama to mark the 50th anniversary of the end of the end of the 2nd World War in Europe. His daughter Maddy Prior is the singer with the band Steeleye Span . Allan died on June 1, 2006. aged 84.
