Robert Mansell was born in London, England.

Towards the end of a career as a business executive, he moved to America where he stayed for thirty years before returning to Britain in 2009. Initially, he lived and worked in New York. Later he became musically associated with the American Reformed Church in St. Thomas and then was made the Music Director of the Frederick Lutheran Church there. Later still he moved to Florida where he became involved in an acting career.

Mansell started writing music almost as soon as he began to play the piano at the age of nine. His music is quite rich in chromatics, which makes it harder to play than it might appear – even though it is quite traditional, never straying far beyond the bounds of conventional romantic tonality. He has written much piano music and religious music. He has also written secular vocal and choral music and also some works for the stage.

Mansell’s playwriting began with an interest in Shakespeare – the man rather than just his writings. This resulted in a lavish musical based upon his life and loves and later also in a play based on the history of the house in which he died. Earlier Mansell wrote a musical based upon the extraordinary life and loves of Marlene Dietrich. More recently he completed a play contrasting the wartime experiences of the nuclear scientist Robert Oppenheimer and a Nazi officer, Paul Blobel. His most recent play is about the amazing life and loves of Cosima – daughter of Franz Liszt and wife firstly of Hans von Bulow and then of Richard Wagner, whose theatre at Bayreuth she continued to run long after his death.

Mansell’s acting career in Florida was an extension of his interest in theatre and music.