The Royal Speculator

At Leeds University, he switched from studying English to fine arts, where he says he encountered "particularly inspirational teachers, who really turned a middle-class boy, a casualty of the public school system, inside out. It was like going into a wall at about 100 miles an hour. I was thrown in with extremely radical, politicized people who tore me to pieces. It was a very good experience."

He had aspirations to act but didn't consider himself good enough. But he knew he could write.

"I honestly think it's the only talent that I can say with any certainty that I have, because I've always known how to tell a story. I love telling stories and rearranging materials so they become a better story."

In the mid-'80s, he and fellow student Mark Wadlow wrote "Gross" -- a satirical play about lost young people. It won an award at the Edinburgh Festival. As a result, they were hired to write training films, starring Monty Python comedian John Cleese. After that, they contributed additional script material to the 1988 movie "Madame Sousatzka," starring Shirley MacLaine.

He says, "They couldn't afford Freddie Raphael," the talented screenwriter. "It's ludicrous to think, 'We'd like Freddie Raphael, but we'll go with these unheard-of kids,' " he says, clearly aware, from the start, of Hollywood's odd logic.

Now it seems everyone would like to work with Morgan. He's extremely busy, this surge of work following "The Deal," a 2003 British TV drama about the complex push-me/pull-me relationship between Blair and another ambitious Labor politician, potential successor Gordon Brown.

"Frost/Nixon," a drama based on a 1977 TV interview, stars Frank Langella as the disgraced former president and Michael Sheen (who plays Blair in both "The Deal" and "The Queen") as Frost. The play finished its London run this month.

While researching "Frost/Nixon," Morgan hit on the idea for the TV movie about the late Lord Longford, who had written a forgiving biography of Nixon. Longford, a liberal and devout Catholic, believed in redemption even for someone as apparently guilty of vile crime as the notorious Hindley, who was convicted for aiding her lover, Ian Brady, in the murder of numerous English children in the 1960s. Longford's efforts to get Hindley released from prison made him hugely unpopular with the British public.

Jim Broadbent, who plays Longford, is full of praise for the accuracy and acuteness of Morgan's research. "When the script arrived, there was absolutely not one word that didn't seem to be coming straight out of Longford's mouth. I mean the rhythm of it, the tempo of it, what he was saying and how he was saying it. It was entirely consistent with everything that I had read, and listened to, and watched myself."

Morgan admits that adapting the work of others is more difficult than creating his own original scripts. His latest challenge is the film version of Philippa Gregory's novel "The Other Boleyn Girl," about Mary, who like her ill-fated sister, Anne, was romanced by Henry VIII.

Despite the contemporary figures he's dramatized, Morgan would prefer never to meet anyone he writes about -- particularly the queen. That hasn't happened, yet.

He's also heeding the advice of "The Queen" director Stephen Frears, who Morgan says taught him: "The greatest thing you must do is to keep your lifestyle smaller rather than bigger."

Morgan says that he lives "in a very modest house, but I have every opportunity open to me. People seem to want to work with me and I don't need to take the big bucks. I never receive big bucks without it being complicated. I would rather write a radio play than have an attritional bad experience earning big bucks."