Jeremy Sandford

Christopher Jeremy Sandford (5 December 1930 – 12 May 2003) was an English television screenwriter who came to prominence in 1966 with Cathy Come Home, his controversial entry in BBC1's The Wednesday Play anthology strand, which was directed by Ken Loach. Later, in 1971, he wrote another successful one-off, Edna, the Inebriate Woman, for The Wednesday Play successor series Play for Today. Early life Sandford was born in London and brought up at Eye Manor in Herefordshire, home of his father, Christopher Sandford, who was the owner of the Golden Cockerel Press. His mother was Lettice Sandford. His paternal grandmother was the Anglo-Irish writer Mary Carbery; by her first marriage he had relatives in the Happy Valley set in Kenya. Sandford was educated at Eton and New College, Oxford, where he read English. During national service, he was a Royal Air Force bandsman. Career After his marriage to heiress Nell Dunn in 1957, they gave up their smart Chelsea home and went to live in unfashionable Battersea where they joined and observed the lower strata of society. From this experience he published the play Cathy Come Home in 1963, and she wrote Up the Junction.