David Hugh Jones

David Hugh Jones (19 February 1934 – 19 September 2008) was an English stage, television and film director. Life and career Jones was born in Poole, Dorset, the son of John David Jones and his wife Gwendolen Agnes Langworthy (Ricketts), and was educated at Taunton School and Christ's College, Cambridge. Originally a television director, he first worked for BBC producer Huw Wheldon working on the Monitor arts television series from 1958 to 1964. His first London stage production was a triple-bill of T.S. Eliot's Sweeney Agonistes, W.B. Yeats's Purgatory and Samuel Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape at the Mermaid Theatre in 1961. He directed his first production for the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Arts Theatre in 1962, Boris Vian's The Empire Builder, and two years later accepted the administrative post Artistic Controller at the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), helping to plan programmes of new plays and European classics at the Aldwych Theatre in London. He also took over responsibility for running the Aldwych from 1969 to 1972, and again in 1975–77. During this period he championed the plays of David Mercer and Maxim Gorky. For BBC television he directed Ice Age, The Beaux Stratagem and Langrishe, Go Down (1978). He also produced Play of the Month (1977–79).