Born in London in 1933, Michael J. Frayn studied at Cambridge after doing his National Service learning Russian in the Joint Services School for Linguists. He began his working life as a journalist before writing plays and novels. Frayn’s early work drew on these experiences:  Alphabetical Order (1975) is a comedy set in a newspaper library, while Towards the End of the Morning (1967) is a satirical novel about the journalists who write the miscellaneous sections of a newspaper. The farce Noises Off (1982) – which follows a group of actors performing a farce and slowly unravelling, both personally and professionally – was a major hit and is frequently revived. In the 1990s Frayn began writing plays based on historical events: Copenhagen (1998), Democracy (2003) and Afterlife (2008). He is also a highly regarded translator of Chekhov’s plays. Kate Dorney

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