Sewell Stokes

Francis Martin Sewell Stokes (16 November 1902, London – 2 November 1979, London) was an English novelist, biographer, playwright, screenwriter, broadcaster and prison visitor. He collaborated on a number of occasions with his brother, Leslie Stokes, an actor and later in life a BBC radio producer, with whom he shared a flat for many years overlooking the British Museum. It was here that Sewell Stokes did much of his writing in the Reading Room, used by so many distinguished writers over the years.

Born in Hampstead, London, Stokes was educated at Cranleigh School in Surrey and his first job in 1918 was as a book reviewer and gossip writer with The Sunday Times in London. Three years later, he became assistant editor for T.P.'s Weekly, a radical newspaper founded in 1902 by the Irish journalist and member of parliament Thomas Power O'Connor.

The author became friendly with the American dancer Isadora Duncan towards the very end of her life, when she was penniless and alone, and in 1928, shortly after her death, wrote a memoir of his conversations with her entitled Isadora, an Intimate Portrait. Years later, he co-wrote the film script for the BBC TV film, Isadora Duncan, the Biggest Dancer in the World, with director Ken Russell. Starring Vivian Pickles and Peter Bowles, the film was first broadcast on 22 September 1966. In 1968 his memoir of Duncan, together with her autobiography, My Life, were adapted by Melvyn Bragg for the film Isadora (US title: The Loves of Isadora), directed by Karel Reisz and starring Vanessa Redgrave and James Fox. In his 1954 novel Recital in Paris the character of Sarah Menken was substantially modelled on that of Isadora Duncan.

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