Nigel Kneale

Thomas Nigel Kneale (born April 18, 1922 in Barrow-in-Furness , † October 29, 2006 in London ) was a British writer and screenwriter and married to Judith Kerr since 1954 . His younger brother is the artist and sculptor Bryan Kneale . His daughter Tacy Kneale is an actress and SFX designer , and his son Matthew Kneale is a writer.

Nigel Kneale grew up in Douglas on the Isle of Man , where his father was the owner and editor of the daily newspaper The Herald . He studied law and worked in a law firm, but was not keen on the prospect of a career in justice. During World War II he wanted to volunteer for the British Army , but was turned down for medical reasons. In 1946 he went to London and studied acting; he graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 1957. He then worked as an extra in Stratford-upon-Avon before he decided to devote himself to writing. Many of his short stories take place on the island of his youth.

Kneale has already been called " The first significant television dramatist "; Judith Kerr describes his successful entry into this profession in the 1950s in her book " Eine Art Familientreffen ".

In 1950 he won the Somerset Maugham Award with Tomato Cain , a collection of short stories . In 1951 he began working as a full-time writer for the BBC , and from 1953 ran the science fiction series The Quatermass Experiment , the first British " street sweeper ". A year later, Kneale worked on the TV adaptation of George Orwell's 1984 , which led to discussions and even parliamentary requests because of shocking scenes; the British Film Institute later included the television film in its list of the Top 100 British Television Productions. In 2004 he received the Karl Edward Wagner Award .

In 1962 his TV version of Wuthering Heights came out. In the following years Kneale was responsible for a large number of TV scripts.

• Look Back in Anger ( Look Back in Anger ), 1958, based on the play by John Osborne
• Quatermass II , 1955, six-part television series
• Quatermass and the Pit , 1958/59, six-part television series
• Der Komödiant ( The Entertainer ), 1960
• First Men in the Moon ( First Men in the Moon ), 1964, from the novel by HG Wells
• The Devil Dances at Midnight (The Witches) , 1966 (under the pseudonym Peter Curtis for Hammer Film Productions )
• The Green Blood of Demons ( Quatermass and the Pit (feature film))
• The Year of the Sex Olympics , 1968
• The Stone Tape , 1972

In the 1970s, Kneale moved from the BBC to ITV .

• Murrain , 1975
• Kinvig , 1981 (humorous SF series, one season, seven episodes)
• The Woman in Black , 1989 (based on the novel by Susan Hill )
• Quatermass , 1979, four-part television series

Web links

• Nigel Kneale in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Biography in British Film Institute (English)