How it all began

Peter Ransley, Honorary Life President

Peter Ransley, Former Honorary Life President

Peter Ransley, was a well-known playwright, screenwriter and author whose BBC play Minor Complications, based on a real case of medical negligence, gained him the Royal Television Society’s Writer’s Award in 1981.

The massive response to the play led to his setting up AvMA together with his wife Cynthia and its first chief executive, Arnold Simanowitz OBE. Peter went on to be involved with AvMA as a trustee for many years.

This transformed the prospects for accountability and redress in cases of medical negligence and continues to be a major influence in campaigning for patient safety.

He wrote single plays for the seminal BBC Play for Today series. His play Kate the Good Neighbour won the Gold Medal in the Commonwealth Film and TV Festival in 1980.

He adapted his novel The Hawk into a film starring Helen Mirren. His novel Bright Hair was a BBC television series with Emilia Fox while his award winning series The Price was a Channel 4 / RTE co-production.

In mainstream television, he worked on series such as Tales of the Unexpected and Ruth Rendell Mysteries. His three most recent TV productions were Fallen Angel, ITV 2007; A Good Murder, BBC1 2006; and his BAFTA nominated adaptation of Sarah Waters Fingersmith for BBC1 in 2005.

Peter had a great interest in history. He wrote a TV series Bread or Blood set at the time of the Swing Riots in 1830. When his two children went to university, he started and almost finished an Open University degree.

He started studying the English civil war and his acclaimed civil war trilogy is the result: Plague Child, Cromwell’s Blessing and The King’s List.

Peter sadly passed away in January 2026.