Peter Gill, playwright who turned ordinary lives into extraordinary drama, dies aged 86<\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n Peter Gill, who has died aged 86, was one of the unsung heroes of British theatre. As both director and playwright his work was characterised by its uncompromising honesty and unflinching integrity. Much admired by his fellow artists, he at last achieved a degree of public fame in his annus mirabilis of 2002<\/a> when his terrific play The York Realist<\/a> won a number of awards and the Sheffield Crucible staged a month-long retrospective of his work as well as a brand-new play, Original Sin<\/a>.<\/p>\n Few remember that Gill, born into a Welsh, working class Catholic family, began life as an actor: look closely and you can spot him in the film of Zulu. But it was at London\u2019s Royal Court, where he began work as an associate director in 1964, that he learned his craft and acquired the values that were to shape his whole career: a belief in the sanctity of text, the purity of design and a respect for actors.<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/993dfa0fdaf388c22c88a99ae256cddb144a4a09\/583_349_3204_2563\/master\/3204.jpg?width=140&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=88a3057662295e7d8454e0cb3b1f9b50\" "\\"Peter")
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