Don Taylor (English director and playwright)

Donald Victor Taylor (30 June 1936 – 11 November 2003; usually credited as Don Taylor) was an English writer, director and producer, active across theatre, radio and television for over forty years. He is most noted for his television work, particularly his early 1960s collaborations with the playwright David Mercer, much of whose early work Taylor directed for the BBC.

Born in Marylebone in London, Taylor attended Chiswick Grammar School and subsequently studied English Literature at Pembroke College, Oxford. While at university he became actively involved in student theatre, particularly with the Experimental Theatre Club. It was for the club that Taylor directed, in 1957, the world premiere of Epitaph for George Dillon by the acclaimed playwright John Osborne.

After graduating, he joined the BBC as a general trainee in 1960, quickly becoming a television director in the drama department. His first directing work was an episode of the crime series Scotland Yard, but he rapidly became more associated with directing single plays. His association with David Mercer began in 1961 with Where the Difference Begins, the first instalment in what became the "Generations" trilogy, the subsequent instalments of which – A Climate of Fear (1962) and Birth of a Private Man (1963) – were also directed by Taylor. He also directed Mercer's Sunday Night Play episode A Suitable Case for Treatment (1962), which explored the writer's experiences of his own nervous breakdown.

Taylor was greatly displeased by the arrival in December 1962 of the Canadian producer Sydney Newman as the new Head of Drama at the BBC. He regarded Newman as an uncultured populist with no theatrical knowledge or background; Taylor himself felt that the BBC should be the "National Theatre of the Air". He also disliked Newman's restructuring of the drama department, one of the features of which was the abolition of the BBC's traditional single producer/director role and the division of responsibilities of producing and directing to separate posts.

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