She has written stage plays based on the novels Pamela[1] and Hangover Square. Her non-fiction works include The Female Wits, a study of female playwrights in the Restoration era and biographies of women from the 17th and 18th centuries such as Charlotte Charke.[2] Her novels include the Countess Ashby dela Zouche series of historical crime mysteries including The Rival Queens.
Life and career
Morgan was born in a "gypsy caravan" on the grounds of Amesbury Abbey in Wiltshire, near Stonehenge.[3] Her parents, originally from Liverpool, resettled in Amesbury, where her father established a dental career and her mother pursued a passion for art.[4][5] Morgan's family moved several times when she was a child, but she always thought of Liverpool as home.[4] She studied at Farnborough Hill in Farnborough, Hampshire, and at the University of Birmingham, receiving a degree there in the Department of Drama and Theatre Arts in 1973.[3][4]
Her television appearances include The Liver Birds (1974), Rachel Gold in The Politician's Wife (1995), four different roles in The Bill (1985-1998), Dorcas in As Time Goes By (1996), the Hon. Myrtle Pongleton in two episodes of Jeeves and Wooster (1991),[7] Rosalie in four episodes of Big Women (1998), Assistant Registrar in Dead Gorgeous (2002) and was Bunty Brace-Girdle in 20 episodes of Mr Majeika (1988-1990). Her film roles include Matron in Never Let Me Go (2010),[3] Anne in A Little Chaos (2014), and Agnes Carpenter in the TV movie Karen Carpenter: Goodbye to Love (2016).[8]
Morgan was nominated Best Actress of the Year 1984 in The Observer for her work at Glasgow's Citizens' Theatre.[1][9] Morgan has put on several 50 minute shows at the National Theatre. In 1991, her show on 'Female Playwrights of the Restoration' at the National Theatre's Cottesloe Theatre was concerned with the largely neglected plays by women dramatists written for the London stage in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. The show, subsequently entitled The Female Wits, included extracts from the plays performed by a group of actors[10][11] and played at various literary festivals including the Isle of Wight, Truro, Utrecht, and on Queen Mary 2. Again at the National, in 2011, she interviewed her friend Celia Imrie on the platform of the Cottesloe Theatre.[12]
Morgan's novels include the Countess Ashby dela Zouche series of historical crime mysteries: Unnatural Fire (2000), for which she was nominated as a Discovery Author by Barnes and Noble in 2001; The Rival Queens (2001); The Ambitious Stepmother (2002) and Fortune's Slave (2004).[3][14]The Rival Queens was nominated for a Lefty Award for "the most humorous mystery novels published in the U.S. in 2002" by Left Coast Crime, California, in 2003.[15] Her non-fiction work includes The Female Wits, the first study of female playwrights of the Restoration stage and biographies of charismatic female figures from the 17th and 18th centuries including Charlotte Charke.[2][14]
She was the author of The Bluffer's Guide to British Theatre (1986), part of The Bluffer's Guides series.
In 1988, she wrote and directed the sketch 'Fat Life' for Before The Act: A Celebration to Counter the Effects of Section 28.[19] This was a gala held at the Piccadilly Theatre to protest Section 28, which had been enacted on 24 May 1988. The programme consisted of material created on gay themes.[20] In 1997, two of her sketches were performed in Then Again, a revue directed by Neil Bartlett at the Lyric Hammersmith.[21]
Also in 2014, she was Artist-in-Residence at the University of California where she directed a production of The Gambling Lady by Susanna Centlivre, a play Morgan rescued from near-oblivion in her book The Female Wits.[8][9][26] In 2019, she directed The Wooden Meadow by Stewart Pringle at the Finborough Theatre.[27]
