William Nicholson

He was awarded the OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) in the 2015 Queen's New Years Honours List for his services to Drama and Literature. He is a screenwriter and author in Lewes, East Sussex, England.

He is an editor and writer, known for Les Misérables (2012), Gladiator (2000) and Unbroken (2014).

He earned his first Oscar nomination for writing the screenplay for Shadowlands (1993). The film also earned its leading lady Debra Winger an Oscar nomination as Best Actress. In 2010, 17 years after the film's release, she praised Nicholson's script to New York Times by calling it "the most literate script I've ever read. I was sad every day that I wouldn't ever say those lines again.".

Has twice been nominated for Broadway's Tony Award as author of a Best Play nominee: in 1991 for "Shadowlands" and in 2004 for "The Retreat from Moscow."

Directed about 50 documentaries for the BBC, mid-1970s to mid-1980s

William Nicholson was born in 1948 in England as William Benedict Nicholson.

Nicholson's wife, Virginia, is the daughter of Quentin Bell, granddaughter of painter Vanessa Bell, and the great-niece of writer Virginia Woolf. A writer herself, she chronicled her Bohemian grandparents' generation in "Among the Bohemians: Experiments in Living 1900-1939" (William Morrow, 2002).