Thomas Nigel Kneale was a Manx screenwriter who wrote professionally for more than 50 years. Predominantly a writer of thrillers that used science-fiction and horror elements, he was best known for the creation of the character Professor Bernard Quatermass. He wrote original scripts and successfully adapted works by writers such as George Orwell, John Osborne, H. G. Wells and Susan Hill.
About Nigel Kneale in brief
Thomas Nigel Kneale was a Manx screenwriter who wrote professionally for more than 50 years. Predominantly a writer of thrillers that used science-fiction and horror elements, he was best known for the creation of the character Professor Bernard Quatermass. He wrote original scripts and successfully adapted works by writers such as George Orwell, John Osborne, H. G. Wells and Susan Hill. He was twice nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best British Screenplay. In 2000, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Horror Writers Association. He has been described as \”one of the most influential writers of the 20th century\”, and as \”having invented popular TV\”. He was born in Barrow-in-Furness, England, but his family came from the Isle of Man, and returned to live there in 1928, when he was six years old. He studied acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, and later became an advocate at the Manx Bar. His first professional script writing credit came when he wrote the radio drama The Long Stairs, broadcast by the BBC on 1 March 1950. In 1951 he was recruited as one of the first staff writers to be employed by BBC Television. He had never seen any television before he started working for the BBC; he spent his first year’s script budget of £250 to hire a full-time writer for the drama department. His final script was transmitted on ITV in 1997, and he died in 2005 at the age of 83.
He is survived by his wife, two daughters and a son. The couple had a son and a daughter, both of whom are now in their 80s and 90s, and a step-daughter, who is in her early 20s. He died of cancer in 2011 at his home in Douglas, on the island’s north-west coast, after a long battle with the disease. He also had a daughter who is now in her late 20s and has a son who is also a screenwriter. He leaves behind a wife and two step-children, who live in London and have a son of their own, who also works in the film and television industry. He will be remembered for his contributions to television, film and radio, as well as for his many short stories, including the novel Tomato Cain and Other Stories, which won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1950. He made his first broadcast on BBC Radio, performing a live reading of his own short story on the BBC’s North of England Home Service region on 25 March 1946. Later that year he moved to London, where he began studying acting. He continued to write in his spare time and in 1949 a collection of his work, entitled Tomato Cain, was published. The book sufficiently impressed the writer Elizabeth Bowen that she wrote a foreword for it, and in 1950 the collection won the Somerset Maugham Award. The following year, Michael Barry became the Head Drama at the BBC Television, writing plays and adaptations of children’s books and light entertainment.
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