Background
Born in Banstead Surrey, Shivas was the son of a schoolmaster father who specialising in teaching English and a mother who was a librarian.
Born in Banstead Surrey, Shivas was the son of a schoolmaster father who specialising in teaching English and a mother who was a librarian.
He attended Whitgift School in Croydon and Merton College, Oxford where he read Law.
While at University, Shivas wrote for the student magazine Oxford Opinions. After abandoning a legal career, he co-founded the magazine Movie (1961-1964) which used the French publication Cahiers du Cinema as its model, becoming its assistant editor (1962-1964), and contributed interviews and articles to The New York Times. He began his television career at Granada Television in 1964 as an assistant to the head of the story department and later worked on the company"s Cinema series as a producer and presenter.
In 1969 he switched networks and the field in which he worked by joining the British Broadcasting Corporation drama department, quickly becoming one of the corporation"s most successful and prolific producers.
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Other productions he oversaw included the anthology series Black and Blue (1973), which included the play Secrets by Michael Palin and Terry Jones. Shivas produced The Borgias (1981) for the British Broadcasting Corporation, which was poorly received by critics, and suffered in comparison with the contemporary Brideshead Revisited on Independent Television. In 1988 Shivas became Head of Drama at the British Broadcasting Corporation, a position he occupied until 1993 when he moved across to head up the Corporation"s fledgling British Broadcasting Corporation Films for which, as executive producer, he oversaw twenty films.
In later years, he returned to producing as a freelancer. Some of his most noted later productions included the second series of Alan Bennett"s Talking Heads monologues in 1998 and the 2003 espionage drama Cambridge Spies.
Shivas died from lung cancer.
Fellow Royal television Society. Member British Academy of Film and Television Arts (council member), AMPAS Los Angeles (producer), Atelier Cinematographique Europeen (board member).