NEW YORK: Romulus Linney, a prolific playwright whose work ranged from stories set in Appalachia to the Nuremberg trials, has died in New York. He was 80. Linney's wife Laura Callanan said the playwright died Saturday at his home in Germantown, New York, north of Poughkeepsie. The cause was lung cancer. Linney, father of actress Laura Linney, wrote more than 30 plays that covered a number of subjects. Some of his works were set in Appalachia, which he was familiar with through his youth growing up in the South. Others were historical dramas, some looking at moments in time like the Nuremberg trials or the Vietnam war and others taken from the lives of public figures like the poet Lord Byron or Frederick II, a king of Prussia.
