Biography
William Martin Russell was born in 1947 in Whiston, near Liverpool. He left school at fifteen, trained and worked as a hairdresser, and later ran his own salon before turning to writing through evening classes. He had his breakthrough with the Beatles-themed play John, Paul, George, Ringo … and Bert; further success followed with the two-hander Educating Rita (1980), about a hairdresser who enrols in an Open University course, and the musical Blood Brothers (1983), for which he also wrote the music and lyrics. Russell's work centres on class, education and working-class life in Liverpool; his screenplay for the Educating Rita film adaptation earned him an Oscar nomination.
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