Behind the Scenes with 2006 TCF ALA winner Piers Plowright

Piers is a Londoner through and through, though his father was half Polish and his mother Swiss. He was born in 1937 in Hampstead, a leafy North London village, where he still lives. When he was younger, he wanted to be an actor but didn’t (luckily, he now thinks) make it. After working for the British Council in Iran and the Sudan as a radio and TV officer, he joined the BBC in 1967 and produced radio dramas, documentaries, and features until his retirement in 1997. Since then he’s been a freelance broadcaster and lecturer.

He has won the Prix Italia Radio Documentary Prize three times: in 1983 for Nobody Stays in This House Long, a portrait of a London family and their home; in 1986 (with British composer Malcolm Clarke) for Setting Sail, a meditation on death and dying; and in 1988 (with poet Roberta Berke) forOne Big Kitchen Table, the story of an exhilarating day in a Philadelphia deli. Piers has also won several Gold, Silver, and Bronze Sony Awards. He is a fellow of the London based Royal Society of Literature and an Honorary Doctor of Literature at the University of Bournemouth.

His last visit to Chicago was in 1998 when he came with another award-winning documentary-maker, Alan Hall, to make a program about Jimmy Yancey, a legendary blues piano player. For Piers, radio, after the book, is the greatest communicator, and he thanks his lucky stars he was never seduced into TV. On his study wall is a quote from English writer GK Chesterton, which has become a kind of credo: "At the back of our brains, so to speak, there is a forgotten blaze or burst of astonishment at our own existence. The object of the artistic and spiritual life is to dig for this sunrise of wonder."



Read an interview with Alan Hall and Piers Plowright featured in Resonance FM magazine here.
Check out a review of "At the Window: Glimpses of a Chicago Piano Player" here.

Letters in Support of Plowright

Piers Plowright was my number one choice from the beginning because of two essential achievements: 1) a body of work whose quality speaks for itself and 2) an impact on radio that extends far beyond his home country. In large part because of him, the British notion of the feature is a worldwide phenomenon. Now retired, he continues to produce work and, very important, is training a new generation of young producers. 

Dean Olsher
ALA Judge
The Next Big Thing
WNYC Radio

Oh gosh. Piers is THE doyen of radio feature-making in the UK. During the course of a long and highly distinguished career at the BBC, he achieved that rare position – for a radio producer – of becoming a national and indeed an international figure, identified with the highest creative standards of radio feature making, recognized by numerous international and domestic awards (including three Prix Italias and any number of Britain’s gold-standard, the Sony Awards) plus continuous critical, peer-group and listener acclaim. Since he retired from the BBC, he has remained active as a producer, teacher and most importantly as an inspiration to a younger generation of feature-makers. Among his many other talents, he has a great gift for making the young and inexperienced feel that they can realise their highest creative ambitions in radio. He has huge charm, kindness and modesty – but he will always tell you exactly what he thinks of your programmes and why. There is steel there too but in a velvet glove.

Robert Ketteridge
Editor, Documentaries Unit
BBC Radio & Music Factual


During the 70s, 80s, and 90s Piers was the pre-eminent features producer in the UK with a big reputation abroad... He was the lone maverick crafted feature advocate who modeled a refined, poetic, heartfelt style in program making... If Piers hadn't opened the doors to "poetic" or "impressionistic" styles of feature-making, the BBC would not commission anything non-linear, non-journalistic. And he's articulate, generous, kind, and incisive.

Alan Hall
Falling Tree Productions


[Piers is] an internationally respected producer, a "realist-magician" whose programmes were never just about the subject at hand... As well as being my mentor for over a decade (he still is), many, many producers have been inspired by him through his "Featuristic Courses" and directly. He is the Joseph Campbell of radio.

Matt Thompson
Loftus Productions Ltd.

Pictures and Poems from Plowright

At the Window by Piers Plowright (inspired by Jimmy Yancey)
There’s an old Blues by Jimmy Y
It tells you how and it tells you why
When to laugh and when to cry
It’s “At the Window"

I see my father in a pool of glass
Listen to the deepest loss
Reach for pen and looking-glass
He’s “At the Window”

The old man chose the piano lid
Didn’t care what “Momma” did
Folded back the cover lid
And shut the window.


How to Make a Radio Feature:
When asked about a secret formula for a good radio program, Piers said: “I’ve often said that there are three things that go into a really interesting feature program. I do a little diagram which has a sort of black cone shooting upwards, the green circle, and in the middle, a red heart. And the cone means adrenaline raising, excitement, something that really makes you want to go on listening. The green circle is focus because it’s no good having the most wonderful range of sounds and ideas and panoramas if you haven’t got something at the center which is of great interest. And I think small things illuminate big things too, particularly in radio. And the red heart (and if you ask me this is the thing that matters more than anything else) is the human passions and human stories that have to touch you…”