Dennis Potter was born and raised in Gloucestershire and educated at New College, Oxford. His controversial career as a playwright, journalist and critic began in the 1960s. He was one of the first significant writers to write specifically for the medium of television. Although he was perhaps most widely known for the drama series Pennies from Heaven, for which he received a BAFTA Best Writer’s Award, and The Singing Detective, his credits include almost thirty original television and radio plays, nine television serials, three novels, numerous works of journalism and several works of non-fiction. Dennis Potter also wrote several acclaimed film screenplays, including Gorky Park.

The White Hotel – Circus performer Lisa visits famous Berlin psychoanalyst Dr Probst to discover the cause of her mysterious breast and pelvic pains. Reading her sexually charged journal, Probst concludes that the answer lies in her past. But then Lisa reveals her unsettling premonitions – ‘I see what is going to happen. And what is going to happen cannot be endured.’ Is her trauma really the result of childhood memories or a dark vision of the future?
Dennis Potter’s unproduced screenplay of D. M. Thomas’ award-winning novel, centres around The White Hotel was taken up by numerous directors, from Bertolucci to David Lynch, with actors including Barbra Streisand and Meryl Streep slated to star – but the project defeated them all. Now, directed by Jon Amiel, who worked with Potter on The Singing Detective, this haunting, hallucinatory drama has finally found an audience.
The play is preceded by a short documentary, The Long Road to the White Hotel, telling the story of the many failed attempts to bring DM Thomas’s novel to the screen and the making of the Radio 4 drama of Potter’s screenplay.

Traitor – In a dingy flat in Moscow he sits alone – a traitor to his family, his friends, his colleagues. Then the international press descend upon him. and he gives his first interview – an interview which brings forth terrible, haunting memories.

Moonlight on the Highway – David Peters is visited in his run-down bedsit by Marie, a researcher for Severn Television, who is collecting material for a documentary about the singer Al Bowlly. David is the editor of the Al Bowlly Appreciation Society fanzine and Marie hopes to secure him as the programme advisor. David is enthusiastic about the offer but has other things on his mind; he has an appointment with an NHS psychiatrist the following day and his anxiety about the meeting, coupled with the novelty of entertaining his beautiful visitor, leads him to make an unwelcome pass at her…

Rain on the Roof – Adultery by John disturbs Janet, so she flirts with the simple, mistreated Billy during the middle of giving him a reading lesson. Unfortunately, it triggers aggressive behaviour in Billy which he directs toward John.

Shaggy Dog – A no-nonsense businessman, Mr. Wilkie, is interviewed for a position with a top-of-the-line hotel chain the Bideawhile Organisation. The interview uses experimental high-stress techniques under the supervision of a consultant Mr. Parker. During the interview, Wilkie attempts to tell a shaggy-dog story, but breaks down and draws a gun.

Blade on the Feather – Jason Cavendish is a retired British professor, living with his family and loyal butler, Mr. Hill, in a remote mansion. Cavendish isn’t used to visitors, but he receives one unexpectedly in the form of Daniel Young, a student working on a thesis involving the author’s work. Soon, however, it’s clear that people aren’t who they appear to be and past betrayals, mystery and murder are all part of the puzzle.

The Changing Forest – A reading of Dennis Potter’s novel first published in 1962, this is his deeply personal study of the Forest of Dean – its people, traditions, ceremonies and institutions – at a time of profound cultural and social change in the late 1950s and early ’60s. With extraordinary precision and feeling Potter describes the fabric of a world whose old ways are yielding to the new: habits altering; expectations growing; work, leisure, language itself changing under the impact of the new television, of commercial jingles and the early Elvis. And, with powerful sympathy and wit, he asks whether the gains of modernity have, for the individuals and society he so marvellously evokes, been worth the loss. Part autobiography of one of the twentieth century’s greatest writers, part elegy for a vanishing way of life and part testament to the abiding humanity that underlies all of Dennis Potter’s work.