My Writing

My name is Phil Mansell and I trained as a film-maker/script-writer at the London Film School where, among other things, I wrote and directed a short film called 'Seven Candles'. 

On the set of  'Seven Candles'

I spent  a postgrad year working on an animation film called 'Any Minute Now' which was screened at the National Film Theatre and was due to be shown on BBC TV's 'Film Night' - until power cuts blacked out the nation's screens.

After spending three years teaching film-making, art and photography in a large comprehensive school, I became a professional writer working in advertising and PR.

In 2014 my two act play ‘According to Claudia’ was selected to launch Newport Playgoers Society’s 92nd season of plays at the 400-seat Dolman Theatre. In a programme which includes plays by Noel Coward, Somerset Maugham, Ira Levin and Richard Curtis, mine is the first play they have a staged that is not by a well-known, “established” writer.

Previously, my one act play ‘Poor Yorick’ was a winning entry in a competition run as part of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Open Stages project and was performed at both the Dolman Theatre and at Blackwood Little Theatre. Samuel French Ltd seriously considered publishing the play and only declined because they had already committed to another spoof of ‘Hamlet’.

Another of my plays, ‘Bunkered’, about a man trying to resurrect a run-down crazy golf course, was one of the winning entries in a competition judged by Welsh playwright Frank Vickery, and enjoyed a very successful week-long run at the Dolman.   

I also won the drama section of an annual writing competition organised by the University of Wales, Newport. This was judged by Wales’s national poet, Gillian Clarke, who was very complimentary about my work, writing in her critique: “The dialogue is completely convincing, funny and touching”.

To date, I have had five books published in the Netherlands and Denmark, three books for teenagers and two picture books, which I also illustrated, for younger children. I am currently finishing ‘Wedded Blitz’ and writing a play about a failed actor who returns to his home and family in the north of England after 50 years of trying, unsuccessfully, to make it big in America.