British literary agents may not generally enjoy the public notoriety of their New York and Hollywood cousins, but few agents on either side of the Atlantic made such an impact in such contrasting genres over so many years as Kenneth Ewing.

During a distinguished career spanning five decades Ewing presided over a pride of literary lions including Iris Murdoch, John Osborne and David Storey, while also recognising and nurturing the talents of such emerging writers as Tom Stoppard and Michael Frayn. At the same time he managed the careers of many of Britain’s most successful radio and television comedy writers, from the mould-breaking humour of Barry Took and Marty Feldman, writers of Around the Horne, to the writers of the sitcom staples of the 1960s and the downright anarchy of Michael Palin, Terry Jones and Graham Chapman of Monty Python.

Kenneth Hugh Robert Ewing was born in Northwood, Middlesex, in 1927. His father was a publisher for the National Magazine Company and his mother a teacher. After wartime schooling at Merchant Taylors, he went up to St John’s College, Oxford, to read modern languages. Apart from rowing for his college Ewing devoted much of his spare time to his first love — the theatre — acting in a string of productions for the Oxford University Experimental Theatre Club and the Tower Players, where he was directed by the fearsome critic C. A. LeJeune, won glowing reviews in The Times and once received a congratulatory telegram from Ralph Richardson.

After university Ewing took a short service commission in the RAF to satisfy his childhood desire to fly, but although he gained his wings he learnt that the postwar RAF had more need of fluent German speakers than pilots and he was posted to RAF Buckeberg, near Hanover, as an education officer. This was precisely the moment that the fragile postwar détente finally crumbled and the Soviet Union began its confrontational blockade of Berlin, but even as a young officer playing his part in the airlift that finally broke the Soviet will, Ewing’s love of the theatre was never quite forgotten — particularly when he was assigned a young National Service flight sergeant called Peter Hall.

A mutual interest in theatre, rather than the potential outbreak of the next world war, turned them into lifelong friends, although Ewing’s happiest memories of the time were of the distinctly non-dramatic days when the pair ventured out on unauthorised rabbit hunts, shooting for the pot to supplement their unit’s meagre rations.

Ewing’s forays into Germany did not end with his return to civilian life — for two years he worked in the BBC’s Eastern Europe Service, translating and broadcasting news and current affairs items (when Russian jamming allowed) to occupied East Germany.

Life took a rather more genteel turn for Ewing in 1952 when he became general manager of the Connaught Theatre in Worthing, West Sussex, then one of the most important out-of-town theatres in the country.

Seven years later he was approached by Fraser & Dunlop, a leading actors’ agency, to set up Fraser & Dunlop Scripts Ltd, with the aim of building a list of writers and authors. Nobody knew how successful the venture would become, but through his university and theatre contacts and aided by a growing reputation for hard bargaining and fair dealing Ewing developed perhaps the most influential and wideranging writers’ list in the business.

By the mid-1960s many of his clients were providing the bedrock of ITV comedy and drama. Vince Powell and Harry Driver, Roy Bottomley and Tom Brennand were the men behind such huge (and in retrospect less than politically correct) situation comedy hits as Bless This House, Love Thy Neighbour and Never Mind the Quality, Feel the Width, while other clients, Peter Eckersley and John Finch, were members of the powerful Group North writing team that provided Granada Television with some its most enduring drama series, including Finch’s A Family at War and Sam.

The torrent of situation comedy classics continued into the 1970s with another Ewing-nurtured team, Johnnie Mortimer and Brian Cooke, whose many series for Thames Television included Man About the House, George and Mildred and Robin’s Nest — series that dominated the British ratings for a decade. And Ewing was instrumental in negotiations to make American versions of all three series — if not the first, certainly the biggest “format” deal of its kind and a coup that made a substantial contribution towards Thames Television’s Queen’s Award for Export.

This was just one strand of Ewing’s activities and as distant from the work of the poet Adrian Mitchell, the National Theatre plays of Tony Harrison and the emerging brilliance of Tom Stoppard and Michael Frayn as could possibly be imagined. It is an indication of Ewing’s influence that when Stoppard was presented with the Best Screenplay Oscar for Shakespeare in Love in 1999 he demanded that the cameras be turned on his agent so that he could acknowledge his debt to Ewing before millions of viewers worldwide.

Away from his desk Ewing had two abiding obsessions — his love of bearded collies (always called Branwell) and since his RAF days a love of flying. On occasion the two overlapped. With the first Branwell in the co-pilot’s seat, Ewing once crash-landed his Piper Cub at Manston airfield while dropping in on friends for lunch. Man, dog and aircraft survived unscathed, even if the Manston landing lights did not.

In 1988 Ewing and his fellow directors merged Fraser & Dunlop with another leading London agency, A. D. Peters, with Ewing becoming co-chairman. The move brought Alan Bennett, Trevor Griffiths, Richard Curtis and the estates of J. B. Priestley and Evelyn Waugh among many more to the joint company’s roster of playwrights and turned Peters Fraser & Dunlop into one of the most powerful talent agencies in the world.

In 2001 the company, now called PFD, was bought by the entertainment and events organisation CSS Stellar, and it was not long thereafter that age and failing health forced Ewing to become a part-time player in his own creation. And in the last months of his life he witnessed a boardroom battle between PFD’s senior staff and its owners, which

has led to all but a tiny handful leaving to form a new company, United Agents, followed en masse by their clients.

Even though Ewing will make no contribution to the future of that enterprise, the newly reunited agents and their eminent clients are in no doubt about how much they owe to his legacy.

Ewing is survived by his civil partner, Gordon Dickerson.

Kenneth Ewing, theatrical and literary agent, was born on January 5, 1927. He died on April 14, 2008, aged 81