These are the Times
A Life of Thomas Paine

By Trevor Griffiths
June 2005
Spokesman
ISBN: 0851246958
208 pages, 4 ¼" x 7"
$42.50 Paper Original


The most ambitious of Griffiths' projects during this time [the 1980s/1990s] is surely his screenplay on the life of Tom Paine, the first draft of which occupied him during much of 1988-89. Griffiths was first approached with the idea by director Sir Richard Attenborough, who phoned him in early 1987 while he was in South Wales working on the Miners' Strike project. Griffiths spent 1988 researching and writing the script, eventually completing a first draft of this screenplay in 1989.

After a number of meetings with Attenborough, Griffiths completed a second draft that June and a revised version of this draft in December. Attenborough has continued to try to line up financing, and though it has appeared at several points on the verge of being launched, the project is still ongoing. Griffiths completed a third draft in January 1995 and a fourth draft in May 1999 and remains hopeful concerning a text that he considers a favorite of his.

History; Drama


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