Ms Wilde explained that there was a "realistic prospect of rehabilitation" and asked the judge to consider the current impact of the pandemic on prisoners. Brought up as a Roman Catholic, he attended St. Bede's College before being accepted into Manchester University in 1952 to read English. After a brief involvement with professional football and a year in national service, he became a teacher. Gabriela is also a professional female actor, trained both in Romania and in Britain, with over 20 years of stage and screen experience. For nine years, she was contracted by Bulandra Theatre, the only Romanian theatre member of L’Union de Theatres de L’Europe and one of the most prestigious in the country. There, Gabriela had the unique opportunity of working with internationally renowned and awarded directors, such as Alexandru Darie (LIFT nomination), Liviu Ciulei (Crystal Globe, Palme d’Or, and Tony Award), Christian Mungiu (Palme d’Or winner) and Andrei Serban (Peter Brook’s assistant in the 70s plus Tony Award) as well as the opportunity of playing on some of the most famous stages in the world as, for example, Piccolo Teatro Strehler di Milano and Maly Theatre in Sankt Petersburg. Other TV and film credits: (2014) Mrs Petri in DCI Banks (Season 2), directed by James Hawes, Left Bank Picture Ltd., ITV UK; (2002) Bella in Callas Forever, featuring Jeremy Irons and directed by Franco Zeffirelli; (1994) Dana in Un Unforgettable Summer, featuring Kristin Scott Thomas and directed by Lucian Pintilie. Griffiths used the name Tom and began speaking to the undercover officer who "presented as a 14-year-old boy, Mark". The Jenin play was never produced. There have been quite a few such disappointments in Griffiths' life – an extraordinary number, actually, when you consider that this man co-wrote the 1981 epic Reds, starring Warren Beatty and Diane Keaton. Reds was nominated for 12 Academy Awards, including best screenplay, and won three. Comedians, Griffiths' classic 1975 piece set in a night-school class for stand-up artists, made an international star of actor Jonathan Pryce after it transferred to Broadway. The play, set in Griffiths' native Manchester, remains the most powerful artistic contribution to the enduring debate as to where bold irreverence stops, and bullying begins, in that branch of theatre.

Griffiths continued to work in the theatre, garnering a notable success with the touring production of Oi for England (ITV, 17 April 1982). His teleplay, Country (BBC, 20 October 1981) was a rarity for Griffiths, a period piece that contained none of the political rhetoric familiar from his earlier works. Griffiths examined the nature of Conservatism through the prism of the 1945 general election. He wrote the television serial, Last Place on Earth (ITV, 1985).

The Committee of the Society for Theatre Research

From the 80s onwards he has also directed his own work both in theatre and on film. His most recent production is the television film Food for Ravens which he both wrote and directed. He is known both for his original works – contemporary and historical – and for his adaptations of works by writers such as Lawrence and Chekhov. His television work includes the single plays All Good Men (1977), Through the Night (1977) and Country (1981) , and adaptations of several of his stage plays, including Comedians, The Party, The Cherry Orchard and Hope in the Year Two (1994) (a television version of Who Shall Be Happy ...?) He has also written three series: Bill Brand, an 11-part series, televised in 1976; The Last Place on Earth (1986), a 7-part series televised in 1985; and Sons and Lovers (1982), a 7-part adaptation of D. H. Lawrence's novel. His most recent work for television is the award-winning film, Food for Ravens (1998), which he wrote and directed.

Among the visitors to his hotel room is Antonio Gramsci, the Sardinian editor of a workers’ paper advocating factory soviets on the shop floor. In the conflict between these two men lies the meat of the play’s drama, and it is difficult to do justice to Griffiths’ ability to explore contrasting attitudes to revolution. In brutally simplistic terms, you could say that Kabak is the pragmatist and Gramsci the idealist. There is a great scene where Kabak urges Gramsci to incite an insurrection and speaks of the workers as if they were a military machine. Gramsci, aware of the danger of factory occupation without wholesale support, argues against a mechanistic view of the masses and asks, “How can a man love a collectivity when he has not profoundly loved single human creatures?” In 2001, Griffiths argued that Comedians might have been partly “instrumental” in the rise in the 1980s of alternative comedy, which “sought not to rubbish victim targets, but rather to question and criticise the traditional […] basis of British standup comedy.” Senior Lecturer; Programme Director for MSc in Classics, MSc in Ancient History and MSc in Classical Art & Archaeology

She explained Griffiths is keen to engage with the probation service adding it is 'certainly a fall from grace for a 61-year-old man with no previous convictions'. Ms Wilde added that Griffiths was "confused about his sexuality" to which the judge commented "he's a little bit old for that" adding "he's got 24 grandchildren".