Background
A native of the town of Larkhall in South Lanarkshire, Butler was born into a well-educated family, with his parents working as teachers.
A native of the town of Larkhall in South Lanarkshire, Butler was born into a well-educated family, with his parents working as teachers.
Student, St. Andrews University, Scotland, 1950. Rada diploma, Royal Academy Dramatic Art, London, 1953.
He specialised in period-piece drama and is particularly remembered for a string of hit British television shows, including Within These Walls, Lillie, We"ll Meet Again and Edward the Seventh, as well as for his acting, most specifically as Doctor Nick Williams on British television"s first medical soap opera, Emergency - Ward 10 in 1960-1962. He subsequently trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and began his performing career in West End revues. In 1956, at the age of 29, he played a prison officer in Joan Littlewood"s Theatre Workshop production of Brendan Behan"s The Quare Fellow.
By 1971, he had mostly given up acting and began to devote all of his energies to turning out teleplays.
Circumstances also permitted an occasional return to acting, as in his own teleplays of the 1974-1978 prison television series Within These Walls, in some episodes of which he played the penal institution chaplain, Review Henry Prentice. Butler died in London at the age of 78.
He is buried in the section of modern graves in the north-east quadrant of the eastern half of Highgate Cemetery in north London. Academy Award nomination for Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium for: Voyage of the Damned (1976).
Member American Academy Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, British Actors Equity, Writers Guild Great Britain.
Married Norma Ronald. Married Kathleen Mary McPhail, May 31, 1969. Children: Alexandra Katrina, Miranda Henrietta.