Garry O'Connor (born 31 January 1938) is an English playwright, biographer and novelist. Personal life Born Edgware, London, England, Garry O'Connor is a biographer and novelist, noted for his publications on theatrical and literary figures. Son of Cavan O'Connor, Irish tenor, BBC broadcasting star and variety artist, and Rita, also a singer, maiden name Odoli-Tate, O'Connor is the grand-nephew of Dame Maggie Teyte DBE, Croix de Lorraine, Chevalier, Legion d'Honneur, the international opera soprano and interpreter of French song, and of James William Tate, songwriter, accompanist, and composer. Educated at St Albans School and King's College, Cambridge, where he was an Exhibitioner and State Scholar, and won the James Essay Prize, O'Connor was President of University Actors. He was taught at Cambridge by Professors Boris Ford and John Broadbent, with George Rylands as his Director of Studies, where O'Connor concentrated mainly on directing and writing plays. He is an MA of King's College. After Cambridge, winning a French Government scholarship to Paris for drama, he studied mime at the École Jacques Le Coq in Paris before joining the Royal Shakespeare Company as Michel Saint-Denis' assistant. This was during the Peter Hall seasons at Stratford Upon Avon. Thereafter he directed plays in London and elsewhere until becoming a full-time writer. On 25 June 1970 he married Victoria Meredith-Owens, a farmer and yoga teacher. They have six children and six grandchildren. His home is in King's Sutton, Northamptonshire. Theatre and media career O'Connor directed his own version of Jonson's Catiline in the Stratford Studio, with Roy Dotrice, Janet Suzman, and directed Jean Tardieu's The Keyhole at the Aldwych Theatre. He directed the 1965 London premiere of Alun Owen's A Little Winter Love at Stratford East ('directed by Garry O'Connor with almost the psychic speed of communication that there can be about jazz': Penelope Gilliatt, Observer); devised and directed A John Whiting Evening, premieres at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, and productions at RADA, the London Drama Centre, and Webber-Douglas School. He also read plays for the RSC and translated plays from French for the RSC, and later for the National Theatre in Olivier's regime. O'Connor was the first Resident Dramatist and Appeals Director of the Hampstead Theatre Club. He has had eight of his own plays produced, among them: I Learnt in Ipswich How to Poison Flowers (1969), at the Arts Theatre Ipswich, directed by Nick Barter; The Musicians (Mercury Theatre, London, 1970),