Nigel Kneale
Thomas Nigel Kneale was a Manx screenwriter and author, whose career spanned more than 50 years, between 1946 and 1997. Predominantly a writer of thrillers that used science-fiction and horror elements, he was best known for creating the fictional scientist Professor Bernard Quatermass. He has been described as "one of the most influential writers of the 20th century", and as "having invented popular TV".
Born in England and raised on the Isle of Man, Kneale studied acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, beginning his entertainment career with BBC Radio. He won the 1950 Somerset Maugham Award for his short story collection Tomato Cain & Other Stories. Kneale was most active in television, joining BBC Television in 1951; his final script was transmitted on ITV in 1997. His breakthrough as a screenwriter came in 1953, writing the highly successful BBC television serial The Quatermass Experiment.
Kneale's signature character went on to appear in various television, film and radio productions written by Kneale for the BBC, Hammer Film Productions and Thames Television between 1953 and 1996. Kneale wrote original scripts and successfully adapted works by writers such as George Orwell, John Osborne, H. G. Wells and Susan Hill. He also wrote well-received television dramas such as The Year of the Sex Olympics and The Stone Tape.
Kneale was twice nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best British Screenplay, for Look Back in Anger and The Entertainer, both directed by Tony Richardson. he received the Horror Writers Association's Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2001.
Biography
Early life
Kneale was born Thomas Nigel Kneale in Barrow-in-Furness, England on 28 April 1922. His family came from the Isle of Man, and returned to live there in 1928, when he was six years old. He was raised in the island's capital, Douglas, where his father was the owner and editor of the local newspaper, The Herald. He was educated at St Ninian's High School, Douglas and trained to become an advocate at the Manx Bar. He also worked in a lawyer's office, but became bored with his legal training and abandoned the profession. At the beginning of the Second World War Kneale attempted to enlist in the British Army, but was deemed medically unfit for service owing to photophobia, from which he had suffered since childhood.1946–1950: Acting career
On 25 March 1946 Kneale made his first broadcast on BBC Radio, performing a live reading of his own short story "Tomato Cain" in a strand entitled Stories by Northern Authors on the BBC's North of England Home Service region. Later that year he left the Isle of Man and moved to London, where he studied acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. He made further radio broadcasts in the 1940s, including a reading of his story Zachary Crebbin's Angel on the BBC Light Programme, broadcast nationally on 19 May 1948. He also had short stories published in magazines such as Argosy and The Strand. He began using the name "Nigel Kneale" for these professional credits, but was known as "Tom" to his family and friends up until his death.After graduating from RADA, Kneale worked for a short time as a professional actor performing in small roles at the Stratford Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon. He continued to write in his spare time and in 1949 a collection of his work, Tomato Cain and Other Stories, 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.
Following this success, Kneale gave up acting to write full-time. He did take small voice-over roles in some of his 1950s television productions, such as the voice heard on the factory loudspeaker system in Quatermass II, for which he also narrated most of the recaps shown at the beginning of each episode. Kneale's publisher was keen for him to write a novel, but Kneale himself was more interested in writing for television. A keen cinema-goer, he believed that the audience being able to see human faces was an important factor in storytelling.
1950–1953: Kneale's early BBC screenplay work
His first professional script writing credit came when he wrote the radio drama The Long Stairs, broadcast by the BBC on 1 March 1950 and based on an historical mining disaster on the Isle of Man. In 1951 he was recruited as one of the first staff writers to be employed by BBC Television; before he started working for the station, Kneale had never seen any television. Kneale was initially a general-purpose writer, working on adaptations of books and stage plays and even writing material for light entertainment and children's programmes. The following year, Michael Barry became the Head of Drama at BBC Television, and spent his entire first year's script budget of £250 to hire Kneale as a full-time writer for the drama department. Kneale's first credited role in adult television drama was providing "additional dialogue" for the play Arrow to the Heart, broadcast on 20 July 1952. This play was adapted and directed by the Austrian television director Rudolph Cartier, who had also joined the staff of the BBC drama department in 1952.Kneale's "lost" radio play You Must Listen, broadcast in 1952, was re-broadcast in a new production by BBC Radio 4 on 20 September 2023.
1953: ''The Quatermass Experiment''
Kneale wrote The Quatermass Experiment, which was broadcast in six half-hour episodes in July and August 1953. The serial told the story of Professor Bernard Quatermass of the British Experimental Rocket Group, and the consequences of his sending the first crewed mission into space where a terrible fate befalls the crew and only one returns. The Quatermass Experiment was one of the first adult television science-fiction productions, held a large television audience gripped across its six weeks, and has been described by the Museum of Broadcast Communications as dramatising "a new range of gendered fears about Britain's postwar and post-colonial security." Kneale chose the character's surname because many Manx surnames began with "Qu"; the actual name itself was picked from a London telephone directory. The Professor's first name was chosen in honour of the astronomer Bernard Lovell.The BBC recognised the success of the serial, particularly in the context of the impending arrival of commercial television to the UK. Controller of Programmes Cecil McGivern wrote in a memo that: "Had competitive television been in existence then, we would have killed it every Saturday night while lasted. We are going to need many more 'Quatermass Experiment' programmes." Like all of Kneale's television work for the BBC in the 1950s, The Quatermass Experiment was transmitted live; only the first two episodes were telerecorded and survive in the BBC's archives.
In the autumn of 1955, Hammer Film Productions released The Quatermass Xperiment, their film adaptation of the serial. Kneale was not pleased with the film, and particularly disliked the casting of Brian Donlevy as Quatermass, as he explained in a 1986 interview. " was then really on the skids and didn't care what he was doing. He took very little interest in the making of the films or in playing the part. It was a case of take the money and run. Or in the case of Mr Donlevy, waddle."
1953–1956: Later BBC works
Kneale and Cartier next collaborated on an adaptation of Wuthering Heights and then on a version of George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Nineteen Eighty-Four was a particularly notable production; many found it shocking, and questions were asked in Parliament about whether some of the scenes had been suitable for television. There was also prominent support for the play; the Duke of Edinburgh made it known that he and the Queen had watched and enjoyed the programme, and the second live performance on 16 December gained the largest television audience since her coronation the previous year. The Guardian newspaper's obituary of Kneale in 2006 claimed that the adaptation had "permanently revived Orwell's reputation," while the British Film Institute included it in their list of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes of the 20th century in 2000.The Creature—an original script by Kneale concerning the legend of the abominable snowman—was his next collaboration with Cartier, broadcast on 30 January 1955, followed by an adaptation of Peter Ustinov's play The Moment of Truth, before Kneale was commissioned to write Quatermass II. Specifically designed by the BBC to combat the threat of the new ITV network, which launched just a month before Quatermass II was shown, the serial was even more successful than the first, drawing audiences of up to nine million viewers. Kneale was inspired in writing the serial by contemporary fears over secret UK Ministry of Defence research establishments such as Porton Down, as well the fact that as a BBC staff writer he had been required to sign the Official Secrets Act.
Quatermass II was Kneale's final original script for the BBC as a staff writer. He left the corporation when his contract expired at the end of 1956; "Five years in that hut was as much as any sane person could stand," he later told an interviewer.
1956–1958: Further ''Quatermass'' works
The same year that he left the BBC, Kneale wrote his first feature film screenplay, adapting Quatermass II for Hammer Film Productions along with producer Anthony Hinds and director Val Guest. Hinds and Guest had overseen the first Quatermass film, upon which Kneale had been unable to work due to his BBC staff contract. Kneale was disappointed that Brian Donlevy also returned in the role of Quatermass. The film premiered at the end of May 1957, and was reviewed positively in The Times: "The writer of the original story, Mr Nigel Kneale, and the director, Mr Val Guest, between them keep things moving at the right speed, without digressions. The film has an air of respect for the issues touched on, and this impression is confirmed by the acting generally." 1957 also saw the release of another cinematic collaboration between Kneale and Guest, when Kneale adapted his 1955 BBC play The Creature into The Abominable Snowman; in this case, Hammer retained the star of the BBC version, Peter Cushing.In May 1957, Kneale was contracted by the BBC to write a third Quatermass serial, and this was eventually transmitted as Quatermass and the Pit across six weeks in December 1958 and January 1959. On this occasion Kneale was inspired by the racial tensions that had recently been seen in the United Kingdom, and which came to a head while the serial was in pre-production when the Notting Hill race riots occurred in August and September 1958. Drawing audiences of up to 11 million, Quatermass and the Pit has been referred to by the BBC's own website as "simply the first finest thing the BBC ever made." It was also included in the British Film Institute's "TV 100" list in 2000, where it was praised for the themes and subtexts it explored. "In a story which mined mythology and folklore ... under the guise of genre it tackled serious themes of man's hostile nature and the military's perversion of science for its own ends."
Despite the success of the serial, Kneale felt that he had now taken the character of Quatermass as far as he could. "I didn't want to go on repeating because Professor Quatermass had already saved the world from ultimate destruction three times, and that seemed to me to be quite enough," he said in 1986. It was also his final new collaboration with Rudolph Cartier, although the director did later handle a new version of Kneale's 1953 adaptation of Wuthering Heights for the BBC in 1962.