Political activism, protest, dissent and conflict with the theatrical establishment were not acquired through the life experience of the writer and dramatist Margaretta D’Arcy, who has died aged 91.
They were genetically formed, deep in her bones; experience merely enhanced them, and they sprouted in her marriage to the playwright John Arden in 1957. Arden was separately acclaimed for his early plays Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance, The Workhouse Donkey and Armstrong’s Last Goodnight.
