David James Mossman was a British journalist, broadcaster, a TV reporter, film-maker, interviewer and former MI6 agent with a famously acerbic interviewing style.
For several years before his death, James Mossman was one of the best-known faces on British TV. However, the distinguished BBC correspondent had a secret - he was gay.
A member of the Panorama team in the 1960s specialising in foreign affairs, he was reassigned to presenting regular arts slot by the BBC because of the controversy around his interviewing style.
Generally recognised to be very handsome, he had a Canadian male lover called Louis Hanssen. Hanssen was married and 8 years younger than Mossman. He died in 1968 of an accidental overdose. Work colleagues of Mossman described Hanssen as domineering.
Probably suffering from depression, he committed suicide in his cottage in Norfolk by taking a fatal overdose of barbiturates, leaving behind a note that read: 'I can’t bear it any more, though I don’t know what "it" is.'
Peter Shaffer, the author of the play Equus claimed that during a stay at the Norfolk cottage that Mossman, of whom he was a friend, told him the story on which he based the play.
In February 2007, The Reporter, a play by Nicholas Wright based on his book and directed by Richard Eyre premiered at the Royal National Theatre in London. The play explores the social climate in the years before Mossman's death as well as the reasons for the death itself.
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