Kathleen Tynan

Who was Kathleen Tynan?

Kathleen Jeannette Halton Tynan was a Canadian-British journalist, author and screenwriter. The daughter of Canadian war correspondent Matthew Halton and the sister of television journalist David Halton, she gave up her journalism career in 1967 to marry theatre critic Kenneth Tynan. She had previously been married to Oliver Gates, a marriage that ended in divorce. Kenneth Tynan was also married when the couple's courtship began. She also had a subsequent relationship with Franco-Swiss director Barbet Schroeder.

She published a novel, The Summer Aeroplane, in 1975. The novel was later adapted into the film Agatha, starring Dustin Hoffman and Vanessa Redgrave; Tynan collaborated with Arthur Hopcraft on the screenplay. She later also wrote a screenplay based on Louise Brooks' autobiography Lulu in Hollywood, although that film was never produced.

Following Kenneth Tynan's death in 1980, she wrote the biography The Life of Kenneth Tynan, her best-known book. She subsequently edited an anthology of her second husband's writing, Profiles, and an anthology of his letters in 1994. She published some of her own theatre and literary criticism as well before her death in 1995.