Adrian Roy Bradshaw Mourby (born 1955)[1] worked for many years as an international opera correspondent and as a producer of operas and BBC dramas. He currently works primarily as a writer and journalist.[2][3][4]

Career

Son of Roy Mourby and Peggy, daughter of Charles Edward Bradshaw, a regimental sergeant major,[5][6] Mourby graduated from the University of Wales, Lampeter and Bristol University Film School. Roy Mourby, who grew up in Wales, was a teacher, and served with the Air Ministry in the Second World War.[7] Mourby's great-grandfather, Tom Mourby, was a former Merchant Navy chief engineer who went on to run gasworks on the Welsh border, later owning one and establishing a family firm later taken over by Mourby's grandfather.[8]

Mourby worked as a producer at the BBC for twelve years, where, amongst other series, he produced a television adaptation of Sir Kingsley Amis' The Old Devils. For these productions, he won numerous national and international awards [Smith/Kline 1982/ Sony 1985/BAFTA Cymru 1991 /Golden Gate 1993/ / BAFTA Cymru 1993 / Celtic Film Festival 1994/ New York Festivals 1994 / Sony 1995], before turning to full-time writing, broadcasting and opera production.

He has published several novels, including We Think the World of Him (1996) The Four of Us (1997) Wishdaughter (2004). He wrote the 1994 BBC Radio 4 series Whatever Happened to ...? about the further adventures of various fictional characters, for which he won the Sony Silver Award for Creative Writing on Radio. In 1997, his book "Whatever Happened to ...?: The Ultimate Sequels" was published with more such tales.

Mourby is a prolific programme essayist working in the UK and Europe. His own opera productions include Semele (Malta 2002) Cosi fan tutte (Oxford 2004) Marriage of Figaro (Blewbury Festival 2006). In 2015 he worked as dramaturg on Wienerstaatsoper's Idomeneo. In 2007 Mourby was awarded the Special Award for Opera Journalism by the Fondazione Festival Pucciniamo, Italy. In 2010 he was one of the finalists for UK Travel Journalist of the Year and in 2013 won the award for Best Travel Article in a Magazine (Italian Tourist Board). Mourby has also written AA guides to Venice, Brussels and Bruges and contributed to various Dorling Kindersley travel guides.

In June 2017 Icon Press published two books based on Mourby's travels round the world "Rooms of One's Own" focussed on places where great works of literature were written. Its sequel, "Rooms with a View" told the story of 50 grand hotels around the world. "Rooms of One's Own " was Highly Commended in the 2018 British Guild of Travel Writers Awards in the Best Narrative Travel Book category.

In January 2019 Mourby was Writer in Residence on Ocean Drive, Miami a post sponsored by The Betsy Hotel. In the Summer of 2019 he was guest lecturer on a number of opera tours of Italy with even more tours lined up in 2020. As a writer on opera and travel- two things that abruptly ceased in 2020- Mourby saw a career that had become too busy suddenly implode during the Covid lockdowns. He continued to write about Greece- and even managed to visit twice during 2020- but he returned to writing fiction in the quiet months of that lost year and wrote the novel Flora Antiparos.

References

  1. ↑ "Adrian Roy Bradshaw MOURBY personal appointments - Find and update company information - GOV.UK".
  2. ↑ Everyday Arias: An Operatic Ethnography, Paul Atkinson, AltaMira Press, 2006, p. 157
  3. ↑ Popular Television Drama: Critical Perspectives, Jonathan Bignell, Stephen Lacey, Manchester University Press, 2005, p. 76
  4. ↑ Staging Wales: Welsh Theatre 1979–1997, Anna-Marie Taylor, University of Wales Press, p. 143
  5. ↑ "Clearing my parents' house became a celebration of their life". TheGuardian.com. 30 November 2013.
  6. ↑ "Could my English grandfather be the son of an Indian prince?". TheGuardian.com. 23 May 2015.
  7. ↑ "'I'll never measure up to my dad'". TheGuardian.com. 15 June 2013.
  8. ↑ "Why I'm falling in love with my ancestors". TheGuardian.com. 30 December 2017.
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