Peggy Ramsay

Margaret Francesca Ramsay (nêe Venniker, born 27 May 1908 in Molong, Australia – 4 September 1991 in London) was a British play agent. Ramsay was raised in South Africa, but during a brief and unhappy marriage came to England in 1929; her husband Norman Ramsay was under investigation in South Africa. After touring with an opera company, and a spell as an actress, she began reading scripts for a number of managements including that of Peter Daubeny, later noted for organising annual 'World Theatre' Seasons.

As she was gaining no financial return from scripts she was finding, her friends and acquaintances persuaded her to open her own agency (1953), in which they invested. For her entire career her business was based in Goodwin's Court, an alley off St. Martin's Lane. She was able to buy out her partners in 1963, after the success of her first 'discovery', Robert Bolt.

She represented many of the leading dramatists to emerge from the 1950s onwards including Alan Ayckbourn and David Hare, but she is best remembered for having discovered Joe Orton and for persuading Michael Codron to stage his "Entertaining Mr Sloane".

Vanessa Redgrave portrayed her in the Orton film biography "Prick Up Your Ears" (1987); and "Peggy For You" (2000), a play by Alan Plater set in the late 1960s, puts Ramsay at centre stage. Two books have been written about Ramsay; the work by Colin Chambers cited below is a straightforward biography, while Simon Callow's memoir "Love Is Where It Falls : The Story of a Passionate Friendship" (1999) is an account of their close friendship.

Peggy Ramsay's last years were affected by the onset of Alzheimer's disease. Her estate has established a [http://www.peggyramsayfoundation.org/ foundation] to help writers and writing for the stage.

ource

*Colin Chambers "Peggy: The Life of Margaret Ramsay Play Agent", 1997, Nick Hern Books