Celebrating playwright Bernard Kops at JW3 in Hampstead

Actors Elliot Levey, Jack Klaff, and George Layton, will also join family and friends at the poignant gathering to commemorate the East End-born writer, who lived for decades in West Hampstead.

Dankworth will be at JW3 to perform comic songs from Kops’ celebrated play Dreams of Anne Frank, while Layton will read from his debut work The Hamlet of Stepney Green.

Bernard Kops lived for decades in West Hampstead, pictured here at Kenwood with wife Erica. (Image: Courtesy of the family of Bernard Kops) Layton, a North Londoner, whose career ranges from Doctor in the House and Minder and to writing hit 80s sit-coms Don’t Wait Up and Executive Stress, befriended Kops when he was cast in a documentary about his life.

“I remember I was wandering around Goodge Street sometime in the 60s, playing Bernard under the influence of drugs, and a lady stopped to ask if I was ok!” he says.

“I got to know him because I had played his younger self, then later I was in his play Enter Solly Gold with Bob Monkhouse playing a charlatan rabbi and went on to do Hamlet of Stepney Green on the radio.

Bernard has his breakthrough in the 1950s but struggled with addiction leading to an attempt on his life. (Image: Courtesy of the family of Bernard Kops) “I would often bump into him in Waitrose in Finchley Road and he always had this fantastic enthusiasm.

“He loved to talk and had this beautiful speaking voice, his eyes would sparkle and he would start to enthuse about his next project.”

“He lived for writing and and was indefatigable about his work. 

Kops was born in 1926 one of eight children of Dutch-Jewish parents. He grew up in Stepney Green attending Stepney Jewish Primary School but moved to Bethnal Green when his house was damaged during the Blitz.

His educated himself at Whitechapel library – which he called his university – before supporting his writing ambitions with day jobs as a barrow boy and docker.

Bernard and Erica ran a secondhand bookstall in the 1950s in Charing Cross Road. (Image: Courtesy of the family of Bernard Kops) He was running a second hand bookstall with wife Erica when his debut play The Hamlet of Stepney Green was staged in 1956. A surreal portrait of Jewish family life, it began a wave of plays by working class East End playwrights including Arnold Wesker and Harold Pinter.

As well as hits Enter Solly Gold, Playing Sinatra and Dreams of Anne Frank Kops wrote for TV including the award-nominated 1975 film It’s A Lovely Day Tomorrow about the 1943 Bethnal Green tube disaster.

That year he tried to take his own life due to amphetamine addiction and wrote about his journey back to sobriety in his memoir Shalom Bomb: Scenes from My Life.Bernard Kops next to a plaque from the former New Road Synagogue in Whitechapel. (Image: Archive)

The father of four also wrote surreal poetry which will be performed at Celebrating Bernard Kops on February 16.

Also attending will be 99-year-old actor Thelma Ruby, who starred as Bessie Levey in The Hamlet of Stepney Green at the Lyric Hammersmith in 1958, and writing students who studied under Kops including award-winning documentary maker Jill Campbell, and actress Katharine Cullison.

Bernard Kops’ family include his daughter Hannah who married Mark Burman – they then introduced their fathers, Bernard and composer David Burman who collaborated on 1992’s Dreams of Anne Frank.

Producer Neil Marcus said: “Putting this evening together I’ve been able to observe how many lives Bernard touched as a teacher as well as a poet and playwright.

“I have been moved by how passionate everyone is about him and all wanting to be part of this celebration of his life and work.”

A Celebration of Bernard Kops is at JW3 on Sunday, February 16.