William Nicholson

Born 1948 · English screenwriter, playwright & novelist

William Nicholson is an English screenwriter, playwright and novelist, born in 1948. He created Shadowlands — first a 1985 BBC television film, then a 1989 stage play, then the 1993 feature film directed by Richard Attenborough — a dramatization of C.S. Lewis's marriage to Joy Davidman and her death. His screenwriting credits also include Gladiator and Les Misérables (2012). The “brutal teacher” line is his invention, written for Hopkins's Lewis, not a quotation of the real Lewis.

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“Experience is a brutal teacher, but you learn. My God, do you learn”

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