Obituary: David Pinner, actor and playwright

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David Pinner

Actor-turned-playwright David Pinner, who has died aged 85, is best remembered as the writer whose novel Ritual inspired the 1973 cult film The Wicker Man, starring Edward Woodward and Christopher Lee.

As a dramatist, though, his most successful work was probably The Potsdam Quartet, set in the aftermath of the Second World War, originally staged at Guildford’s Yvonne Arnaud Theatre in 1973, subsequently staged by the Lyric Hammersmith, then produced in New York, and most recently revived at the Jermyn Street Theatre in London in 2013.

Having grown up in Peterborough, where his father was an amateur actor, Pinner attended Deacon’s school (now Thomas Deacon Academy) before gaining a place at RADA in the same year as John Thaw, Sarah Miles and Tom Courtenay.

Following several years in rep, he landed featured roles in TV shows such as Emergency Ward 10, Z-Cars, The Villains and The Wednesday Play in the 1960s.
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It was while playing the detective role in The Mousetrap in 1966 – he once joked that his stock in trade as an actor was "toffs and policemen" – that Pinner began writing, producing his first play, Dickon, at the Queen’s Theatre, Hornchurch. Fanghorn (1967), The Drums of Snow (1969) and Lightning at a Funeral (1970) followed. The last two were staged by the Stanford Repertory Theatre, California.

Gradually, writing began to take over from acting and, during the next 30 years, Pinner produced more than 20 plays, four novels and two volumes of poetry – Journeys in Trance and Dropping Out of Seaweed Sky. In 2014, his sequel to Ritual was published, called The Wicca Woman. Early on in his writing career, Pinner’s mentor was the prolific stage and film writer Leo Lehmann.

Pinner’s great passion was for history and many of his plays were inspired by real-life events, including The Potsdam Quartet, which focused on the four ill-assorted musicians – the Griller Quartet – who were drafted in to provide some light relief for the crucial post-war meeting between Winston Churchill, Clement Attlee, Joseph Stalin and Harry Truman to decide how Europe was going to be divided up. It was a subject very close to Pinner’s heart since his father-in-law, Sidney Griller, was a founder member of the group.

As well as acting, writing and painting, Pinner was also a popular and accomplished teacher of acting and drama, with spells at Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art, Colgate University in New York and Grinnell College in Iowa.

David Pinner was born on 6th October 1940 and died on 22nd December 2025. He is survived by his wife Kate, and their children, Honor and Dickon.