Gordon Williams

Who is Gordon Williams?

Gordon M. Williams is a Scottish author. Born in Paisley, he moved to London to work as a journalist. He has written for television and is the author of over twenty novels including From Scenes Like These, shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1969, Walk Don't Walk and Big Morning Blues. Other novels include The Camp, The Man Who Had Power Over Women and The Upper Pleasure Garden.

He ghosted the autobiographies of association footballers Bobby Moore, Terry Venables and manager Tommy Docherty.

In 1971, his novel The Siege of Trencher's Farm was controversially filmed as Straw Dogs. Sam Peckinpah's cinematic treatment marked a watershed in the depiction of sexual violence in the cinema though the most controversial scenes are absent from the book. Other film work includes The Man Who Had Power Over Women, from his own novel, and Tree of Hands, as scriptwriter from a Ruth Rendell novel. Williams also wrote the book of Ridley Scott's film The Duellists.

In 1976 film producer Harry Saltzman hired Williams to re-write the script for The Micronauts. Although the film was never made, Williams' novelization was published in 1977; he subsequently wrote two sequels.