English playwright and screenwriter Julian Mitchell was BOTD in 1935. Born in Epping, Essex, he was educated at Winchester College, before attending Oxford University. He began his literary career as a novelist, publishing his first book in 1962, and winning the Somerset Maugham Award for his fourth novel The White Father. His first produced screenplay was the 1966 spy thriller Arabesque, directed by Stanley Donen and starring Gregory Peck and Sophia Loren. He is best known for his play Another Country, based on the early life of gay Cambridge spy Guy Burgess. Premiering in London in 1981, it helped launch the careers of actors Kenneth Branagh, Rupert Everett, Daniel Day-Lewis and Colin Firth. A critical and commercial success, it was successfully adapted for film in 1984, with Everett and Firth repeating their stage roles. His next play After Aida, a biopic of Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi, premiered in 1985, and he scripted ten episodes for the first season of TV crime drama Inspector Morse. His produced film screenplays include Vincent & Theo, a biopic about artist Vincent van Gogh and his brother Theo; August, an adaptation of Chekhov’s play Uncle Vanya; and Wilde, a biopic about the trial and conviction of gay playwright Oscar Wilde, portrayed by Stephen Fry. Mitchell’s 2007 TV drama Consenting Adults dramatised the creation of the 1957 Wolfenden Report (which recommended the decriminalisation of homosexuality in England), focusing on the troubled relationship between committee chairman Sir John Wolfenden and his promiscuously gay son Jeremy.