Seventy three year-old Alan Sharp, long a successful screenwriter with, among others, Rob Roy, Ulzana’s Raid and Night Movies to his name is on the long list for Best Adapted Screenplay in this year British Academy of Film & Television Arts’ (Bafta) Awards.

The film in question is a short based on Sharp’s adaptation of a little known novella written in 1936 by Irishman, Lord Dunsany. It focuses on two men dining together, one of whom – a clergyman, Dean Spanley (the title role played by Peter O’Toole) – has been a dog in a previous incarnation.

Sharp moves quietly between his homes in Tighnabruaich on the Cowal side of Argyll’s Kyles of Bute, Kawau Island in New Zealand and Los Angeles. He has a history of working with top-flight actors. Dean Spanley sees Peter O’Toole joined by Sam Neil and and Bryan Brown. Burt Lancaster worked in Ulzana’s Raid, a classic western; and Gene Hackman and a young Melanie Griffith were in Night Movies. Rob Roy of course had Liam Neeson in the title role, along with Jessica Lange, John Hurt, Tim Roth, Eric Stoltz and Brian Cox.

Dean Spanley is on a list of fifteen for Best Adapted Screenplay and Peter O’Toole is also on the list for Best Supporting Actor.

Sharp was born near Dundee, adopted by a couple living in Greenock, worked in the shipyards on the Clyde and became something of a literary sensation in the 1960s with his first novel, A Green Tree in Gedde. Novelist Beryl Bainbridge, who bore their daughter, modelled the chief character of her novel Sweet William on him.

Now the man who sought anonymity after the huge success of Rob Roy, while working constantly for American television, finds himself back in the limelight, one step away from final nomination for a Bafta.

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