Biography
Alma Cullen (10 May 1938 – 7 August 2021) was a British screenwriter and playwright. Born Alma Fitzpatrick in Liverpool, she studied English at Liverpool University, graduating in 1970. She began writing with a radio play for BBC Radio Leeds while still a student and later moved into television drama.
In the 1970s and 1980s she wrote a series of single plays for television, including STV productions Northern Lights (1982), shortlisted for an Emmy, and Off Peak (1984), which won a silver medal at the New York TV Festival. Cullen wrote four episodes of Inspector Morse between 1989 and 1992 and contributed to A Touch of Frost. She shared Writers’ Guild of Great Britain awards for best original drama in 1991 and 1992. Her four-part series Intimate Contact (1987) was among the first British television dramas to address the AIDS crisis.
She also adapted works by authors including Agatha Christie and Joanna Trollope. Later she returned to stage and radio writing, including Inspector Morse adaptations, and lived in Edinburgh for much of her career.
