Plater was once asked how he managed to attract a cast including Dench, Ian Holm (playing the drums in drag), Leslie Caron, Cleo Laine, Billie Whitelaw, Olympia Dukakis, Joan Sims and June Whitfield. "They read the script," he replied, no doubt lighting up another fag. The show was rewritten in diminished form for the theatre, but it wasn't half as good, nor as wonderfully cast. Main article: The Forsyte Saga (1967 TV series) Susan Hampshire and Eric Porter in the 1967 television adaptation of The Forsyte Saga. Galsworthy wrote one further trilogy, End of the Chapter, comprising Maid in Waiting, Flowering Wilderness, and Over the River (also known as One More River), chiefly dealing with Michael Mont's young cousin, Dinny Cherrell. In a short interlude after The Man of Property Galsworthy delves into the newfound friendship between Irene and Old Jolyon Forsyte (June's grandfather, now the owner of the house Soames had built). This attachment gives Old Jolyon pleasure, but exhausts his strength. He leaves Irene money in his will, with Young Jolyon, his son, as trustee. In the end Old Jolyon dies under an ancient oak tree in the garden of the Robin Hill house.

In 1989 Tidy was dismayed at the arrival of a young new editor, David Thomas, the third in as many years. At 29, Thomas, an old Etonian, had edited the Mail On Sunday’s You magazine, and his brash style – declaring that “Punch could be mega – I mean, mega mega” – was not to Tidy’s liking, and he resigned. Galsworthy's sequel to The Forsyte Saga was A Modern Comedy, written in the years 1924 to 1928. This comprises the novel The White Monkey; an interlude, A Silent Wooing; a second novel, The Silver Spoon; a second interlude, Passers By; and a third novel, Swan Song. The principal characters are Soames and Fleur, and the second saga ends with the death of Soames in 1926. This is also the point reached at the end of the 1967 television series. One night, Tim is amazed when his bed takes him to a rehearsal for a grand flypast of all the world’s beds. Tim realizes that some of the most important beds are missing, and speaks up – with dire consequences. The jazz-loving, heroically cigarette-smoking, Hull City-supporting Plater was a populist all-rounder with more than 300 assorted credits in radio, television, theatre and films (his screenplay for DH Lawrence's The Virgin and the Gypsy, directed by Christopher Miles in 1970, is probably his best) as well as journalism, six novels, broadcasting and teaching. He was always busy, and always writing. In 1983 the strip resurfaced as a series on Radio 2, which Tidy co-wrote with John Junkin. He also adapted the strip for the stage with the playwright Alan Plater.

Bill was in the headlines last year, not for good reasons, after he and his son Robert were faced to waited almost 24 hours in a hospital A&E department with a serious chest infection, to the dismay of his family. The Leicester Mercury reported how the 88-year-old was taken to Leicester Royal Infirmary in an ambulance on Wednesday 20th July and had to wait – becoming increasingly exhausted and distressed – until the next day before he was placed in a bed on a ward. The Fosdykes themselves pursue the tripe business in various ways, such as selling alcoholic tripe in the United States during Prohibition. The many Fosdyke children grow up and have adventures of their own, including joining the Royal Flying Corps during World War I. Plater's agent for many years was the terrifying Peggy Ramsay, whom he memorialised in his Hampstead theatre play, Peggy for You (1999), with Maureen Lipman giving one of her greatest performances, ruling the roost in her St Martin's Lane eyrie with the eccentric hauteur of a mad Russian empress. Miriam Margolyes leads a comedy spoof version of John Galsworthy's classic 'The Forsyte Saga' novels

A 1949 adaptation, called That Forsyte Woman in its United States release, starred Errol Flynn as Soames, Greer Garson as Irene, Walter Pidgeon as Young Jolyon, and Robert Young as Philip Bosinney. This novel concludes the Forsyte Saga. Second cousins Fleur and Jon Forsyte meet and fall in love, ignorant of their parents' past troubles, indiscretions and misdeeds. Once Soames, Jolyon, and Irene discover their romance, they forbid their children to see each other again. Irene and Jolyon also fear that Fleur is too much like her father, and once she has Jon in her grasp, will want to possess him entirely. Despite her feelings for Jon, Fleur has a very suitable suitor, Michael Mont, heir to a baronetcy, who has fallen in love with her. If they marry, Fleur would elevate the status of her family from nouveau riche to the aristocratic upper class. The title derives from Soames' reflections as he breaks up the house in which his Uncle Timothy, recently deceased in 1920 at age 101 and the last of the older generation of Forsytes, had lived a recluse, hoarding his life like property. Plater was appointed CBE in 2005. His final TV drama, Joe Maddison's War, with a cast including Kevin Whately, Robson Green and Derek Jacobi, is in post-production for ITV.Tidy’s other TV appearances included Watercolour Challenge, Through the Keyhole, Blankety Blank and Countryfile. His radio appearances include 1988 editions of I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue, when he stood in for Barry Cryer. He also wrote and presented Draw Me, a children’s television series in 13 parts.

A 1994 New Scientist article reporting the end of the strip note s the magazine wanted “ some straight talking about the scope and purpose of research on Porton Down”. To force the issue, the editor invited Bill Tidy to turn his imagination and speedy pen to uncover just what might be going on behind the secrecy surrounding a research establishment such as Porton Down. Ministers were then insisting that it was involved in “work of fundamental importance – beyond anything to do with biological warfare”. Plater was always suspicious of theories about writing, preferring to glean his ideas and material from everyday conversation in pubs and clubs, where he was the most convivial company imaginable. "I'm only human and therefore not without faults," he said, "but at least I don't stink up the place with arcs and paradigms. My approach to dramatic structure is to play Duke Ellington's 1940 version of Harlem Air Shaft, which contains all you need to know about dramatic structure, if you have ears to listen." Separate sections of the saga, as well as the lengthy story in its entirety, have been adapted for cinema and television. The Man of Property, the first book, was adapted in 1949 by Hollywood as That Forsyte Woman, starring Errol Flynn, Greer Garson, Walter Pidgeon, and Robert Young. In 1967, the BBC produced a popular 26-part serial that dramatised The Forsyte Saga and a subsequent trilogy concerning the Forsytes, A Modern Comedy. In 2002 Granada Television produced two series for the ITV network: The Forsyte Saga and The Forsyte Saga: To Let. Both made runs in the US as parts of Masterpiece Theatre. In 2003, The Forsyte Saga was listed as #123 on the BBC's The Big Read poll of the UK's "best-loved novel". [2]The subject of the second interlude is the naive and exuberant lifestyle of eight-year-old Jon Forsyte. He loves and is loved by his parents. He has an idyllic youth, and his every desire indulged. Jazz was the cornerstone of Plater's life. He decamped to Chalk Farm, north London, from Hull in 1984, and virtually lived in Ronnie Scott's jazz club with his second wife, Shirley Rubinstein, from whom he was inseparable. They held their wedding reception on the premises. He prefaced his 2006 autobiography, Doggin' Around – the title, too, of his 1994 film about a crotchety jazz pianist played by Elliott Gould – with an open, explanatory love letter, almost, to Duke Ellington. He was hooked the moment he heard Mood Indigo on his grandparents' wireless set at the age of five: "Something about it made my ears tingle." June, Young Jolyon's defiant daughter from his first marriage; engaged to an architect, Philip Bosinney, who becomes Irene's lover

The stage play. The time is 1902 and the Fosdyke tripe business is failing, so they decide to move to greener pastures in Manchester – the land of meat pies and perhaps fortune? We follow their progress through to the First World War. OTHER WORKS Naughty, vulgar, downright rude, the rhymes in this book should appeal to children of all ages. By the author of “War Music” and “London in Verse”. Fleur, Soames's daughter from his second marriage, to a French Soho shop girl Annette; Jon's lover; later marries the heir of a baronet, Michael Mont The Forsyte Saga, first published under that title in 1922, is a series of three novels and two interludes published between 1906 and 1921 by the English author John Galsworthy, who won the 1932 Nobel Prize in Literature. They chronicle the vicissitudes of the leading members of a large upper-middle-class English family that is similar to Galsworthy's. [1] Only a few generations removed from their farmer ancestors, its members are keenly aware of their status as " new money". The main character, the solicitor and connoisseur Soames Forsyte, sees himself as a "man of property" by virtue of his ability to accumulate material possessions, but that does not succeed in bringing him pleasure. His workload was phenomenal. At one time he was drawing six strips and he said he had to be careful not to mix them up and send them to the wrong newspapers or magazines. He also appeared regularly on television, in Countdown, Blankety Blank and Countryfile. In 1975 he was confronted by Eamonn Andrews with his famous red book when Bill was the subject of This Is Your Life.

Retailers:

The Fosdyke Saga has been adapted as a TV series (starring Roger Sloman and Sherrie Hewson), a radio serial by the BBC and a stage play. Following The Forsyte Saga, Galsworthy wrote two more trilogies and several more interludes based around the titular family. The resulting series is collectively titled The Forsyte Chronicles.