Nicholas Stuart Gray (1912 – 1981) children's author, playwright, thespian

Gray was born in Sydenham. The father was a cork merchant with his own business, and in 1927 he patented a new rear-viewing system for cars. He had been active in amateur dramatics when young, and his sister was a violinist. The mother was born in Leytonstone, of Scots parents, but after being orphaned, grew up in Aberdeen with her maternal grandmother and became a nurse. They were married in Aberdeen, and then lived in north London close to Golders Green tube station, and later in Anerley close to the Crystal Palace, and then in the 1930s in Hove, Sussex, west of Brighton.

Grey was raised as Phyllis Loriot Hatch, the eldest child, and had a sister and two brothers. They had a large house and a nanny. As Nicholas remembered when interviewed in 1973: 

“About ten. I wrote stories, and then I would dramatize them. We had a very big nursery with an archway at one end. My mother arranged a curtain for this, and we did plays behind it. She gave us kitchen paper and a screen or two, so we could paint our sets and pin them up. We used to knock up a play in an afternoon and do it in the evening. We charged people a penny admission, and there was no talking.”

Phyllis became a pupil at the Progressive School of Music, Elocution and Dancing in Croydon, and in May 1928 came second in competitive elocution (in the category for ages 15 and 16) at the Croydon Musical Festival, and later that year acted in plays put on by the school’s Progressive Players. That November Phyllis played Bassanio in a Shakespearean medley. In January Phyllis played the lead in a playlet based on Tolstoy’s What Men Live By. In May 1932, Phyllis wrote and acted in a play at the Brighton Music Festival. In July 1933 Phyllis competed for the coveted Ellen Terry Cup at the annual BESS elocution contest. 

By that November Phyllis was listed as acting at the prestigious London theatres, Sadler’s Wells and the Old Vic. The Old Vic cast of Macbeth led by Charles Laughton and Flora Robson performed the play on the wireless 8 April 1934. Phyllis was listed as the second witch.

And then Phyllis Hatch disappeared.

In 1938 the seemingly unknown thespian Nicholas Gray talked his way into becoming director of the Try-Out Guild (a group formed to test the interest of theatre management in new plays) saying that he had been acting in repertory theatre in Scotland for ten years. He did this while also giving his birth year as 1922, that is that he was 17. When the war started in September 1939, he joined the local Home Guard, the unpaid armed citizen militia. It is said that he then registered as a Conscientious Objector, and was sent to do farm work. 

He still managed to fit in theatre work. In April 1940, Gray’s play Judgment Reserved was performed at the Lindsey Theatre Club in Notting Hill, with Gray playing one of the main parts.

In December 1940 The Slough, Eton and Windsor Observer reported that the female lead at the Theatre Royal, Windsor was indisposed and that Nicholas Gray stepped in to replace her. 

“When at the end of the performance, the audience were let into the secret, there was a general gasp of surprise, and an enthusiastic round of applause for Mr Gray. His movements and voice were perfect for the part, and despite the fact that he is not himself effeminate, his acting was quite feminine.” 

In August 1948 his play The Haunted, was the first at the re-opened Torch Theatre Club in Kensington. BBC television had been resumed in June 1946 after its closure during the war, and The Haunted was broadcast on television October 1948.

Gray had noticed that there were radio and television shows for children, and cartoon matinées at the cinema, but nothing in live theatre except pantomime. He said that he did not actually like children, but wanted to introduce children to live theatre while young in order to ensure an ongoing audience when they grew up. His first children’s play to be written was The Tinder Box, but the first performed was a variation on Beauty and the Beast which was performed at the Mercury in Notting Hill Gate at Christmas 1949 with set design by Joan Jefferson Farjeon, and ran for a week of sell-outs. Gray and Farjeon then founded the London Children’s Theatre.

Beauty and the Beast became a perennial favourite, revived Christmas after Christmas, And one success led to others, and Gray quickly became a famous children’s playwright. Many of the plays were based on well-known fairy tales, usually with a twist. The plays were usually with set designs by Farjeon – and the two had a life-long friendship. Farjeon also did set design for plays by Agatha Christie.

Gray continued to act not only in his own plays but also in Shakespeare plays as Hamlet, Richard II and Iago.

The Daily Telegraph columnist Winefride Jackson wrote, 3 January 1957: 

“I asked Mr. Gray how he assessed the appeal of his plays to children. ‘I write what pleases me. As I consider I have the IQ of an average child it seems to work.’ When I murmured that he was surely under-rating himself he replied, ‘Certainly not. The average child is very intelligent. One assumes that children grow cleverer as they grow older. Personally I think they grow more stupid. Young children have a merciless logic and are extremely critical.’ “

In 1959 Nicholas finally had gender surgery, although neither the doctor who prescribed testosterone, nor the surgeon are documented. Apparently no oophorectomy (removal of ovaries) was done, perhaps because Gray was close to menopause.

Nocholas acquired a retreat, a farm in Devon. He was strongly opposed to hunting foxes with hounds, and in October 1968 he was in the news when he warned a hunt away from his land while carrying an ancient blunderbuss. In November 1971 he wrote to the Western Daily Press “and also the national press, but they ‘regretfully’ would not print my letters” to mention the widespread distaste for hunting with hounds.

In 1973 Gray was interviewed for an anthology on children’s literature.

Overall Gray wrote twelve published plays for children; at least two unpublished plays for adults and two (plus one “scientific entertainment”) for children; eight novels, one novella and three collections of short stories for children; one adult whodunnit novel; one collection of poetry and one book of autobiography centred on his cats. Some of his later works were illustrated by his sister, Winifred May Hatch.

Gray died age 68 in March 1981. The death certificate stated: “a) Bronchopneumonia; b) Carcinomatosis; c) Ca Ovary (*NB Sex Change 1959)”, that is pneumonia after ovarian cancer. He left his royalties and copyrights to his siblings, and a niece, and Joan Jefferson Farjeon. His modest estate was reported as valued at £33,101 (£130,000 today),

Joan Jefferson Farjeon died age 93 in 2006.

• “The wireless performance of Macbeth”. The Guardian, 7 April 1934: 14.
• “Judgment Reserved”. The Kensington News and West London Times, 5 April 1940: 5.
• “ ‘Leading Lady’ who was a man: No-one realised it”. The Slough, Eton and Windsor Observer, 6 December 1940: 1.
• “Torch Theatre Club: The Haunted”. Kensington and Chelsea News, 14 Aug 1948: 4.
• “The Mercury Theatre”. The Kensington News and West London Times, 16 December 1949: 3.
• “Children’s film corner”. The Kensington News and West London Times, 16 January 1953: 3.
• Winefride Jackson. “Writing for children”. The Daily Telegraph, 3 January 1957: 5.
• D. “Puss in Boots, Lyric, Hammersmith”. The Kensington News and West London Times, 4 January 1957: 9.
• M.P. “You must take your imagination along”. The Sutton and Cheam Advertiser, 31 December 1959: 8.
• Stephen Amys. “Puss on Boots is cat of character”. The Eastern Evening News, 30 December 1967: 5.
• Douglas Slight. “A Blunderbuss stops the Hunt”. Daily Mirror, October 10, 1968:13.
• “Gunman farmer hunts a hunt”. Western Daily Press, 10 October 1968: 4.
• Nicholas Stuart-Gray. “Tally-Ho! The M5 Foxhounds”. Western Daily Press, 18 November 1971: 6.
• “Nicholas Stuart Gray Interviewed by Justin Wintle” In Justin Wintle and Emma Fisher. The Pied Pipers: Interviews with the influential creators of children’s literature. Paddington Press Ltd, 1974: 147-160.
• “Obituary: Nicholas Gray”. The Daily Telegraph, 19 March 1981: 16.
• “Beastly beginnings”. The Daily Telegraph, 19 March 1981: 18.
• “Actor’s estate”. Southern Daily Echo, 27 October 1981:2.
• “Nicholas Stuart Gray”, in Janet Podell (ed). The Annual Obituary 1981, St Martin’s Press, 1982.
• Rob Maslen. “Nicholas Stuart Gray, Down in the Cellar (1961)”. The City of Lost Books, March 24, 2020. Online.
• Ann Harvey. “Joan Frances Farjeon (Joan Jefferson Farjeon), scenic designer: born London 26 May 1913; died Northwood, Middlesex 8 August 2006”. The Independent, August 13, 2006.
• Claire Jordan. “The Performance of a Lifetime: the many roles of Nicholas Stuart Gray”. Old Tails for New Primates, Online.

EN.Wikipedia            IMDB       SF Encyclopedia

This article is in part a precis of Claire Jordan’s much longer account based on her own research – which is excellent, and which I suggest if you want more detail.

When Gray transitioned in 1939, he gave his birth year as 1922 or 1923, and some publications say 1919.

Why did he choose ‘Gray’ as a surname? Jordan suggests: 

“Maybe because hatching is a way of making greyscale in art using black ink, which he would know because his sister Winifred grew up to be a commercial artist. Also, because he was using his new name to live as a man whilst still, for the moment, anatomically female, he might have been making a rather dark joke about the traditional saying ‘All cats are grey in the dark’, explained by Wiktionary as ‘Sex is enjoyable regardless of the physical attractiveness or social station of one’s partner.’ ”

Why did Gray reduce his age by 10 years? Almost certainly to look like an androgynous youth. Michael Dillon was prescribed testosterone at the end of the 1930s, and is generally taken to be the first trans man anywhere to receive such. However it is possible that Dr George Foss who prescribed to Dillon, also prescribed to Gray. If so it is not documented. Men of Gray’s actual age were of course being conscripted after the war started in September 1939. Jordan suggests that Gray was so called, but had to undergo the standard medical examination. The doctor rather than out Gray as trans, supported his assignment to the Home Guard, and later as a Conscientious Objector.

Jordan comments 

“ Good Omens, by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, has definite echoes of some of Gray’s work: the play The Other Cinderella revolves around a demon and a good fairy who are officially meant to be vying for control of human souls but are secretly friends and collaborators, a lot like Crowley and Aziraphale; and the episodic novel The Garland of Filigree features a demonic hound called Gytrash who decides that he is more dog than demon – again, decidedly reminiscent of the hell-hound called Dog in Good Omens”.

Jordan’s webpage includes a bibliography of Gray’s writings, but does not include the early plays under the name of Phyllis Hatch.

Rob Maslen's article is a good overview of the contents of Gray's fiction.