Michael SayersMICHAEL SAYERS, who has died aged 98, was a poet and short-story writer and also wrote for stage and screen. In addition, he was one of the pioneers of live drama on American network television.
His writings became more political with the outbreak of the second World War. He worked for Friday,a magazine dedicated to exposing Nazi attempts to keep the US out of the war. It was exciting and dangerous work as the Nazis had powerful American friends, including Henry Ford.
With Albert Kahn he wrote three political books. Sabotage! The Secret War against America(1942) was a US best-seller. Plans by Readers Digest to publish excerpts prompted FBI director J Edgar Hoover to ask: "Can nothing be done to stop this?" The Plot against the Peace(1945) was followed by The Great Conspiracy: The Secret War Against Russia(1946).
Born in Dublin in 1911, Michael Sayers was the youngest of four children of Philip Sayers and his wife Molly (née Harmel). His father, a Jewish immigrant from Lithuania, was a strong supporter of the national movement and through Michael Noyk met both Michael Collins and Arthur Griffith.
The family lived in Rathmines and later Ranelagh, and Michael had vivid memories of police raids and searches.
At his father's behest he studied law at London University. But he was more interested in writing and enrolled at Trinity College Dublin, studying French under Samuel Beckett. He contributed to College Miscellanyas well as Motley, a small magazine edited by Mary Manning and published by the Gate theatre.
He sent some poems to TS Eliot, who encouraged him to continue writing and commissioned him to write drama criticism for The Criterion.
Leaving Dublin for London, he became a rising star in the literary world. He contributed short stories and reviews to The New English Weekly, edited by AR Orage, and his stories were included in Best British Short Stories for three successive years from 1935.
He conducted a lively correspondence with Ezra Pound, and shared a flat with George Orwell and Rayner Heppenstall, who Orwell famously beat with a shooting stick after Heppenstall crawled home drunk.
Seeking to expand his horizons Sayers sailed to New York armed with letters of introduction from Eliot. He joined the visionary designer and theatre producer Norman Bel Geddes as head of drama projects.
In New York he met and married Mentana Galleani, daughter of the famous Italian-American anarchist Luigi Galleani, whose followers included Sacco and Vanzetti. The couple’s two sons Seán and Peter were born in 1942 and 1945 respectively.
After the war, with the rise of McCarthyism, he was blacklisted. He left the US and settled in France. His marriage broke up, and he formed a relationship with Sylvia Thumin, an American painter living in Paris. They were married in 1957.
In the meantime his play Kathleenwas staged on Broadway and in London. Produced in Dublin at the Olympia theatre in 1955, it was described in this newspaper as "a little fantasy that has moments of great brightness gleaming around the old, old Irish dramatic parable of the Poor Young Woman and her Three Green Loves".
While living in Alba in the south of France, in the early 1960s he decided to spend a year in Crosshaven, Co Cork, to renew his Irish connections.
Working mainly for television, under assumed names he wrote scripts for such series as Robin Hood, Ivanhoeand The Avengers.
He wrote the final script for Casino Royale(1967) and acted as creative consultant on other Bond films. With Michael Butler he wrote the first screenplay for the musical Hair(1979). He also published poems and stories in the prestigious literary journal Botteghe Oscura.
In 1980 he returned to New York, in search of work. His plays Electra: the Legend(1997) and The Neutrals(1998) were staged there, and Joan Saint Joan(1991) was produced in London.
He returned to poetry but this remains unpublished.
Remembered by friends as a charming and engaging person, he was also an inspiring teacher whose guidance benefited many aspiring writers and poets.
Predeceased by his wife in 2006, he is survived by two sons, a stepson, nine grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren.
Michael Sayers: born December 19th, 1911; died May 2nd, 2010