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Andrew Davies was born in Rhiwbina, Cardiff on 20 September 1936. The son of two schoolteachers, Davies himself taught at schools and universities after graduating with a degree in English Literature. He combined his love of literature, teaching and writing until he gave up teaching to pursue his writing career full time in 1987.

In 1990 he won an Emmy award for outstanding writing for Â鶹Éç drama series House of Cards and in 1994 he adapted George Eliot's Middlemarch for the Â鶹Éç, receiving a Bafta nomination for best serial and winning the 1994 Writers' Guild of Great Britain award for best dramatised TV serial.

Davies will always be remembered for his adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice for the Â鶹Éç (1995) starring Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle. The series was a huge success; he was nominated for Bafta and Emmy awards for the drama and won the 1996 Writers' Guild of Great Britain award for best dramatised TV serial for the second time in three years.

He wrote the screenplay for The Fortunes and Misfortunes of Moll Flanders (1996), adapting Daniel Defoe's risqué novel and in 1998 adapted William Makepeace Thackeray's Vanity Fair for the Â鶹Éç.

Davies adapted Kingsley Amis' novel Take a Girl Like You in 2000 for TV and in 2001, showing his diversity, co-wrote the screenplay for film Bridget Jones's Diary from the novel by Helen Fielding. He would also co-write the screenplay for the sequel, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (2004).

In 2001 he was part of the Bafta-award winning team for the production of Anthony Trollope's The Way We Live Now starring David Suchet and would write the screenplay for another of Trollope's works for the Â鶹Éç, He Knew He Was Right, in 2004.

Achievements in 2002 included adaptations of Sarah Waters' Tipping the Velvet, Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago and George Eliot's Daniel Deronda which starred Hugh Dancy, Romola Garai and Hugh Bonneville.

Davies also wrote the screenplay for the Â鶹Éç's epic production of Dickens' Bleak House (2005). The drama gained Davies a Bafta nomination for Best Writer and an Emmy nomination for outstanding writing for a miniseries, movie or a dramatic special. He won the Royal Television Society's award for best writer (drama) and was part of the Bafta-award winning team that scooped the Best Drama Serial award.

In 2007 he was responsible for bringing Northanger Abbey, Fanny Hill and A Room With A View to the small screen and in 2008 Davies wrote the screenplays for two further Â鶹Éç period dramas: an adaptation of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility and Dickens' Little Dorrit starring Matthew Macfadyen and Claire Foy, with a brief appearance from Eve Myles.

Selected screenplay works

• House of Cards (1990)
• Middlemarch (1994)
• Pride and Prejudice (1995)
• Vanity Fair (1998)
• The Way We Live Now (2001)
• Bridget Jones's Diary (2001)
• Tipping The Velvet (2002)
• Bleak House (2005)
• Fanny Hill (2007)
• Little Dorrit (2008)