1 ‘The visit of a new Bridie play is always a theatre event in Glasgow…’ So began The Herald’s review of the latest James Bridie play on February 10, 1950. He was the Glasgow-born playwright whose witty comedies helped revive Scottish theatre in the 1930s – but if he had stuck to his original choice of career, we might never have heard of him.

Glasgow Times:

2 The young Osborne Henry Mavor was born in the city in 1888, the son of electrical engineer and industrialist Henry and his wife Janet. Osborne went to Glasgow Academy and studied medicine at Glasgow Uni, graduating in 1913. He became a GP, a military doctor during World War One serving in France and Mesopotamia, and then a consultant physician and professor.

Glasgow Times:

3 He did not become a full time writer, changing his name to James Bridie, until 1938. He returned to the army during World War II, again serving as a doctor. He had two sons with Rona Locke Bremner, whom he married in 1923) – one was sadly killed in the Second World War, the other also became a physician and playwright and later Deputy Chairman of the Edinburgh Festival.

4 His first play, The Sunlight Sonata (1928), written under the pseudonym of Mary Henderson, was staged by the Scottish National Players. Three years later Bridie achieved success with his London production of The Anatomist (1931), based on a well-known criminal case.

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5 James was a cofounder in 1943 of the Glasgow Citizens’ Theatre. He died of a stroke in 1951 and is buried in the Glasgow Western Necropolis. The Bridie Library at the Glasgow University Union is named after him. Actress Freya Mavor, best known as Mini McGuinness in the E4 teen drama Skins, is his great-granddaughter.