Gordon Williams

Gordon Williams was a prolific novelist and screenwriter. After starting out as a journalist on newspapers and magazines he was commercial manager of Chelsea FC, and was the ghostwriter for the England football captain Bobby Moore. With England manager Terry Venables, Gordon wrote They Used To Play on Grass and the Hazell detective series which was adapted for television in 1978. His books The Man Who had Power Over Women and The Siege of Trenchers Farm were both adapted into films, the latter by Sam Peckinpah into his cult classic ‘Straw Dogs’. He was widely praised for what Melvyn Bragg described as the “tremendously fierce truthfulness” of his work, and his novel From Scenes Like These was shortlisted for the inaugural Booker Prize.