Box Tunnel Survivors' Group #20

I've been interviewed about my 2010 Being Human novel The Road by Michael from the Box Tunnel Survivors' Group podcast. 

• Box Tunnel Survivors Group on Podbean
• Box Tunnel Survivors Group on Spotify
• Box Tunnel Survivors Group on Amazon Music

That book was the result of me posting here in January 2009 after seeing a preview of the first full episode of Being Human at a BFI screening, and being fascinated by the changes made to the format since the broadcast pilot. The link I tweeted to this post was spotted by Steve Tribe at BBC Books just as plans were afoot to do novels. I didn't know any of that until two months later when Steve got in touch.

On 5 May 2009, we met with series creator Toby Whithouse and producer Rob Pursey, who gave us lots of helpful guidance, including the thing they thought worked really well for Being Human. Each episode, they said, should focus on a new character who comes into the orbit of the housemates. That became the hook for the ideas me, James Goss and Mark Michalowski pitched over the next few weeks.

Then, on 19 August, James and I were in Bristol for a set visit, and lurked in one corner of the hospital ward while Mitchell (Aiden Turner) presented Lucy (Lindsay Marshall) with a fish. Wr got to poke around the housemates' house (both the real location in Totterdown and the interior sets inside a huge warehouse). That trip was ably managed by Derek Ritchie, who went on to be a producer on Doctor Who. 

How exciting it was, working with James and Mark on those novels, threading plot elements between us, kept in line by Steve Tribe and editorial colossus Nicholas Payne.

I'd forgotten until Michael reminded me on the podcast that I went to the preview screening for the first episode of season 2 of Being Human, at the Curzon cinema in Mayfair. That was a wild night, the place packed with excited fans. A couple of weeks later Steve Tribe was back in touch about the possibility of new Being Human audio books. It never happened, sadly, but I found the three ideas I sent in, one for each of the regular cast:

• Mitchell: Higher Powers — an old friend of Mitchell’s turns up and thinks his friends a bad influence
• George: The Cure — George helps a couple of elderly Russian immigrants, one of whom has been attacked by a werewolf. It turns out they are monster hunters.
• Annie: Guardian Angel — Annie tries to help a ‘friend’ who always made life difficult when Annie was alive.

Pedro (? - 2023)

Pedro, by Nimbos

This morning, we took turns to say goodbye to Pedro, our grumpy, once-chonky cat, before the Dr escorted him away on one last trip to the vet. 

A few weeks ago we thought he'd been knackered out by the hot weather; he wasn't unhappy, just listless. When the rain and chill hit, he didn't recover his energy. Then he was losing weight. I took him to the vet last week already expecting the worst. They found him full of cancer and he went downhill quickly. We'd booked him in for a final trip to the vet later this week and this morning had to bring that forward. He didn't even need the injection - in one last, typical act of defiance, he died as they were preparing it.

Oh, that cat.

Why 'Pedro'? I've been asked this a lot over the past five years. The rescue home where we found him in the summer of 2018 had a simple labelling system; each new cat they received was given a name beginning with the next letter in the alphabet. When this scrawny character arrived at their door, they'd just had a cat given a name beginning with 'O', so next in sequence was 'P'. They already had a 'Pete', hence 'Pedro'. The home assumed we'd come up with something more suitable soon enough but seven year-old Lord of Chaos was horrified by the idea we would dare to change his name.

It was a good name for quite a character.

The first time I took Pedro to the vet, sometime soon after we adopted him, he managed to make his feelings known by spraying piss through the slots of his carrying case, soaking me in the process. He then reached out a claw and caught my arm, so I arrived at the vet covered in piss and blood.

This delighted the vet, not least because Pedro had clearly got it all out of his system. So she picked him up and made soothing noises, and he pissed all over her.

Blimey, he could sulk. Rain and snow were obviously our fault. Woe betide anyone who sat in his chair (it's my chair, where I do most of my work). Or obstructed his comfy seat on the back of another sofa, where he could half slump on top of the radiator. Or if there was anything in the way of where he liked to laze beneath the front window. He declined to use a cat flap; you'd be summoned to open the door.

His grumpiness was matched by his greed. Pedro's dinner time was 5.15 each night, so from about 2 he'd trot after you hopefully, his forlorn wail of a not-meow more fitting a cat one-third his size. But Pedro was a survivor, having lived for some time on the mean streets of Streatham before we found him at a rescue home. You could see those survival skills in his scavenging and thieving, and the way he'd go crazy at the barest sniff of a plastic box full of chow mein.

Or duck. Or tuna. Or roast dinner. Or cheap sliced ham. 

Pedro was also affectionate - and not just when we were eating. Until recently, he liked nothing better than to sleep at the end of our bed, on the Dr's feet. If it was cold, he would move gradually up the bed, sometimes reaching the pillow. When the children were away - at school or overnight somewhere - he'd often curl up in their beds. If I was watching some hokey sci-fi late at night, he'd cuddle up, particularly enamoured of the twirling coloured lights in a star field or space battle. He weathered, usually with patience, a lot of cat squeezing and love.

What a lot of love we doted on that cat.

Doctor Who Magazine #592

The new issue of Doctor Who Magazine is out today. In "Quick Draw", I spoke to storyboard artist John Erasmus about his working relationship with director Mark Tonderai. John produced storyboards for the Doctor Who episodes directed by Mark - The Ghost Monument and Rosa in 2018, and the forthcoming festive episode.

In just 800 words, there wasn't space to include all the fun stuff John has worked on, though we did talk about Wednesday and Foundation (which I love), and the Amazonas Comics project John set up with Yousaf Ali Khan to connect communities in the Amazon rainforest with to schools in the UK.

The new DWM also features another "Sufficient Data" infographic. With my long-time collaborator Ben Morris taking some take away, this one has been illustrated by Roger Langridge - the first time we've worked together, though I've admired his stuff for years.

Pieces of Eighth - Letting Go

In February, Kenny Smith interviewed me about my Doctor Who short story 'Letting Go', and you can now listen to that chat on the latest episode of the Pieces of Eighth podcast.

• Doctor Who - Pieces of Eighth: 'Letting Go' on Spotify
• Doctor Who - Pieces of Eighth: 'Letting Go' on Apple podcasts

'Letting Go' written by Simon Guerrier and read by India Fisher, is included on Doctor Who: Short Trips Volume 02, released in February 2011.

Blurb: "Charley learns a lot about the Doctor when she visits the family of a dead hero."

See also:

• Short Trips recollections - on the Doctor Who short stories I wrote
• Some notes on writing Doctor Who short stories

The Daily Doctor

Details have been announced for the book I've written with Peter Anghelides, Doctor Who: The Daily Doctor, to be published in August. Blurb as follows:

The Daily Doctor is a page-a-day guide to living your best Time Lord life. As days turn to weeks turn to months, stay serene with your daily dose of the inspirational plans, pronouncements and principles that bring order this crazy and chaotic universe.

From what it means to be human, when it's best to run and the best approach to filling your pockets, this book contains nothing less than the tao of Doctor Who - 365¼ hot tips on life and how to live it!

Publisher: Ebury Publishing 

ISBN: 9781785947988 

Number of pages: 464 

Weight: 500 g 

Dimensions: 222 x 138 x 40 mm

Whotopia

BBC Books has announced Whotopia - The Ultimate Guide to the Whoniverse will be published on 16 November. It's written by Jonathan Morris with assistance from Una McCormack and me.

Blurb as follows:

Published to coincide with three feature-length anniversary specials, the ultimate official celebration of 60 years of Doctor Who, featuring heroes, monsters, spaceships, planets and more... all as you've never seen before. Welcome to the Whoniverse. First stop- everywhere. 

Six decades may only be a handful of heartbeats to a Time Lord, but for Doctor Who it's the adventure of several lifetimes. Evolving over 60 years, the world's longest-running sci-fi TV show has gifted us a universe of menacing monsters and unforgettable heroes. You might even call it a 'Whotopia'. 

Now you can roam free through the Doctor's dimension as never before in this special commemorative book for Doctor Who's diamond anniversary. Join all the Doctors as each tells their own story. Learn about their legions of legendary allies - and hear from the monsters' own mouths about what makes them tick. Find danger on alien worlds and threats here on Earth in all eras. And explore the gadgets, robots, spaceships, computers and mind-blowing creations that crowd the never-ending corridors of Whotopia. 

Crammed with exciting new images and in full colour throughout, Whotopia- The Ultimate Guide to the Whoniverse is the essential celebration of 60 years of Doctor Who.

Publisher: Ebury Publishing 

ISBN: 9781785948299 

Number of pages: 324 

Weight: 750 g 

Dimensions: 293 x 219 x 40 mm

Doctor Who and the Ark

The Ark is now out from Big Finish. I produced this full-cast audio story starring Tom Baker and Terry Molloy. It's adapted by clever Jonathan Morris from the script by John Lucarotti - this is the original version of what became TV classic The Ark in Space.

It's a thrilling and weird adventure, especially fascinating because it adds so much insight into the creative process of that much-loved TV story. There's a particularly brilliant cliffhanger but also the character of the Doctor is like nothing we've ever seen - a kindly old man who quietly slips in to fix problems, a sort of janitor of time and space. Reading the script, I kept thinking of Mr Richardson, the gently humoured caretaker at my primary school a thousand years ago.

What a thrill to work with my childhood hero Tom Baker and to hear his own thoughts on the script and how he should play this so-very-different Doctor. What a treat to work with Terry Molloy (my daughter, who overheard some of the remote recording, referred to him as 'Scary Dude'). What a brilliant cast and crew. I'm especially grateful to director Samuel Clements, sound designer Mark Henrick and composer / exec producer Nicholas Briggs. Amazing cover artist Ryan Aplin has shared clean artwork and his process.

I've now handed on the reins of Doctor Who - The Lost Stories to another producer to be announced in due course. 

Doctor Who Magazine #591

I've a couple of things in the new issue of Doctor Who Magazine out today.

In "Location, Location, Location", assistant location manager Alex Moore tells me all about his job on the new series - which isn't all bins and car parks.

(I've been chatting to Alex anyway as his excellent article on the late director Frank Cox, published in the new issue of TARDIS (vol 7 no 5), has been very useful for my forthcoming book on The Edge of Destruction.)

I've also written the "Sufficient Data" infographic illustrated by Ben Morris looking at the winners of the readers' poll into best Fifth and Sixth Doctor stories.

And the back cover is a big ad for Daleks! Genesis of Terror which is out today. Rob Ritchie has produced the most amazing video trailer.

Trouble with Lichen, by John Wyndham

There's a masterpiece in blurbage on the back of this Penguin edition:

"It was Diana Brackley who put the milk out for the cat; who dropped a speck of lichen in it by mistake; who noticed how the lichen stopped the milk turning.

But it was Francis Saxover, the famous biochemist, who carried on from there; who developed Antigerone, the cure for ageing; who then tried to suppress a discovery which was certainly in the megaton range.

And so it was Diana Brackley who went to town with Antigerone in one of John Wyndham's gayest and most satirical forays into the fantastic.

'If even a tenth of science fiction were as good, we should be in clover' - Kingsley Amis in the Observer"

It's a remarkable feat, a big science-fiction idea about the way science can affect social change, drawing, I think from the impact of penicillin and of the Suffragette movement, and all conveyed here as light romcom. Brian Aldiss famously criticised Wyndham for writing "cosy catastrophe", but this is all-out fun. 

Antigerone slows the biological process, so those who take it do not age. The trouble of the title is that there's only enough of the lichen to make this wonder drug for at most 4,000 people. The result is lots of debate on the ethics of announcing the discovery, let alone deciding who might share its benefits. 

Diana is a brilliant character, a young, determined woman with a habit of shocking people by saying the wrong thing - or rather what she thinks. At eighteen, she's asked by a schoolteacher whether her parents are proud of her academic success. Diana responds immediately that her "Daddy's very pleased", but can't say the same for her mother.

"'She tries. She's really been awfully sweet about it,' said Diana. She fixed Miss Benbow with those eyes again. 'Why is that mothers still think it so much more respectable to be bedworthy than brainy?' she inquired. 'I mean, you'd expect it to be the other way round.'

Miss Benbow replies, carefully, that "comprehensible" might be a better word that "respectable", and suggests the possibility that, "when the daughter of a domestic-minded woman chooses to have a career she is criticising her mother by implication".

"'I hadn't looked at it that way before,' Diana admitted thoughtfully. 'You mean that, underneath, they are always hoping that their daughters will fail in their careers, and so prove that they, the mothers, I mean, were right all the time?'" (pp. 12-13)

Diana soon has a career as a brilliant scientist who also likes to look good, and sees no contradiction in using the cutting-edge science she's developed as a beauty treatment for other women. In fact, she sees how the cosmetic aspects of the new discovery can advance the feminist cause. It's not exactly what you expect from a male sci-fi writer of this vintage.

Several of the traits Diana exhibits align with what we'd now think of as autistic and it's refreshing to read a decades-old book that celebrates such diversity. They make her a better character and better person. Sadly, Saxover is less engaging and there's little to explain Diana's long-lasting attraction. His attitude to other women doesn't exactly do him any favours - over pages 25 and 26, he lists the young women who have caused chaos at his laboratory by falling for the men, the women the ones at fault.

Other things are discomforting from a modern perspective. There's a racist joke on page 196 and a general ease with the idea that resources in China should be for the exclusive use of people in the UK. This may be part of the satire. As the situation gets ever more serious, with moral quandaries leading to kidnap and murder, the lightly comic love story gets a little tangled.

"There could have been bloodshed even something like a civil war,"

says one character on page 200, justifying a rash course of action. But there has been bloodshed: this speech comes just 18 pages after an old watchman, Mr Timpson, is killed by the blow from a cosh, a man called Austin is hospitalised and Saxover barely survives a planned arson attack on his home.

I think that mismatch is down to the effort to bridge different forms: science-fiction with the satirical, fantasy on the cusp of what's credible. It's a balancing act, and one that doesn't wholly work in this instance, but it's fascinating to see tried in this way. In fact, that balance is what Wyndham talked about in a 1960 interview for the BBC magazine programme Tonight at the time of publication. How boggling to see him justify this approach and discuss the mechanics of genre on the equivalent of The One Show. 

I Used to Live Here Once, by Miranda Seymour

I've been out and about this week - to the Novel Experiences Doctor Who convention on Saturday, and then to go look at some old documents relating to David Whitaker on Monday - and have done so in the company of Diana Quick reading this new biography of Jean Rhys (1890-1979).

The title instantly won my attention: it's taken from the brilliant, unsettling short story by Rhys which has long haunted my imagination. I suspect the biography will linger, too. It's a richly detailed, very human portrait of a spiky, funny, troubled life and achieves a remarkable thing. In the final chapter, "The Old Punk Upstairs (1977-79)", an elderly Rhys is living in an upstairs room at the home of Diana and George Melly, who had it decorated on her behalf.

She was demanding to begin with, but things steadily got worse.

"The change in Rhys at this point was absolute and devastating. Her loving hosts had become the enemy. Everything they did was wrong. Nicknaming her 'Johnny Rotten' - after the punk prince of bad behaviour - was George's way of trying to dispel a darkness in which no glimmer of light appeared. All their good times had been blotted out. Rhys ranted to everybody who dared to come near her that she was a helpless victim, deserted for weeks on end by a woman who - the unkindest cut of all - produced hideous clothes which her imprisoned guest was then compelled to buy. Even now, Diana was trying to prevent her from going home. Of course, George wrote in his ruefully honest account of the debacle, the converse was true: 'Di could hardly wait.'" (p. 358, citing Melly's "The Old Punk Upstairs", Independent on Sunday, 28 October 1990.)

Throughout her life, Rhys could be rude, aggressive and violent. Yet Seymour makes us sympathetic to Rhys and to those who suffered her "crack-ups".

Of course, that Rhys spent much of her last years feeling trapped in an upstairs room is ironic given her best-known work, Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), which (along with Jane Eyre, to which it is a prequel) was one of my A-level English set texts. What will especially linger, I think, is the decades in which Rhys's novel was in gestation, and the role of actress Selma Vaz Dias (1911-77) in reviving Rhys's literary career then seeking to control it. The novel was published when Rhys was in her 70s, the work of a lifetime given the many parallels to her own life which Seymour neatly draws out. No drafts survive, and yet Seymour teases out the development, the competing influences, the story of the book.

There's something, too, in Rhys' various names. She was born Ella Gwendolyn Rees Williams, but took on a number of aliases, as a novelist, a wife and, at the end, a patient - George Melly noted that her hospital bed was labelled "Joan". All these different characters, all these different lives, all inside one person.

Daleks! Genesis of Terror

The terrific trailer for Daleks! Genesis of Terror is out now.

• Listen to the trailer for Daleks! Genesis of Terror
• Download the trailer for Daleks! Genesis of Terror

The new CD and download release is something very special - though I suppose I would say that, as producer. It features Tom Baker and a full cast performing Terry Nation's original draft of the first episode of Genesis of the Daleks, once voted the best Doctor Who story of all time by readers of Doctor Who Magazine.

I've found it fascinating to work on and hope you'll enjoy it when it's out later this month.

• Buy Daleks! Genesis of Terror from Big Finish

Blurb as follows...

In a paved garden outside time, the Doctor is presented with an awful prophecy: the conquest of all time by the Daleks. To prevent this terrible fate, the Time Lords have decided on a radical course — to weaponise time themselves, and destroy the Daleks before they were ever created. And they want the Doctor to carry out this extraordinary task!

Soon, he and his companions Sarah and Harry are on the battle-ravaged planet Skaro, where a war has been raging for centuries. The war is now waged by teenagers using the last surviving weapons. Everything is desperate. But the Kaled’s chief scientist has a new weapon that he thinks might just change everything…

Disc 1:

Full cast version of Terry Nation's first draft of episode one of Genesis of the Daleks, with Nicholas Briggs providing the stage directions, plus readings by individual cast members of the storylines for the other episodes.

Disc 2:

BBC broadcaster and journalist Samira Ahmed interviews Philip Hinchcliffe.

Cast:

• Tom Baker (The Doctor)
• Sadie Miller (Sarah Jane Smith)
• Christopher Naylor (Harry Sullivan)
• Peter Bankolé (Time Lord / General Grainer)
• Samuel Clemens (Nyder)
• Alasdair Hankinson (Ravon / Kaled Leader)
• Terry Molloy (Davros)
• James Phoon (Kaled Boy / Operator)

Crew:

• Narrated by Nicholas Briggs
• Featured Guests: Philip Hinchcliffe and Samira Ahmed
• Senior Producer: John Ainsworth
• Additional dialogue by Simon Guerrier
• Theme arranged by David Darlington
• Cover Art by Ryan Aplin
• Director: Samuel Clemens
• Executive Producers Jason Haigh-Ellery and Nicholas Briggs
• Music by Nicholas Briggs
• Producer: Simon Guerrier
• Sound Design by Jaspreet Singh
• Written by Terry Nation

Flesh and Blood, by Stephen McGann

Yesterday, I think I signed off on one of the five books I've been working on simultaneously. Work continues on the others - next week, I hope to go dig through a box of paperwork about David Whitaker that has newly come to light, in the hope I can weave it into the biography I'm well into writing up.

All this activity has meant little time for reading other than checking quotations and references. But last night I finished Flesh and Blood - A History of My Family in Seven Sicknesses by the actor Stephen McGann. He's been tracing his family history since his teens, and follows a line from the the Irish potato famine to the slums of Liverpool and then on to the present day. The Irish history is material he's already mined in the drama he produced and starred in with his three brothers, The Hanging Gale (1995), while it's easy to see how his wife Heidi Thomas has also drawn from personal experience in the series she still oversees, Call the Midwife (2012- ).

Of course, McGann plays kindly, compassionate Dr Patrick Turner in that, which means I heard a lot of the medical explanations in the book in that same warm, reassuring voice. The seven sicknesses - hunger, pestilence, exposure, trauma, breathlessness, heart problems and necrosis - are explained and contextualised in a straightforward, readily comprehensible style.

What really brings the book to life is the specific, human stories - many of which are astonishing. Stephen's great uncle, James McGann, was a fireman on the Titanic, survived the sinking and gave evidence at the enquiry that followed. As a result, his own voice is preserved in the Yorkshire Post of 23 April 1912, an eye witness to the last moments of Captain Smith.

Stephen himself witnessed the disaster at Hillsborough on 15 April 1989 - he was in attendance at the football match, along with his brother Paul. As well as his testimony of what he saw that day, I'm struck by what happened afterwards. It took hours before fans were permitted to leave the ground. And then:

"As Paul and I walked down a Sheffield backstreet, dazed by tragedy and wearing our scarves tight against the evening chill, we suddenly heard a shouted profanity above us, directed against supporters of Liverpool. Pieces of paving stone were thrown from a high balcony in our direction. Shocked out of our daze, we ran for cover." (p. 76)

There's personal tragedy, too, and lots on the mechanics and infighting when you're one of five children - which I found very easy to relate to. There's also McGann's fascination with historical documents, and the sense that going through old papers suddenly gives of your own contribution to history through the papers that bear your name. But what I especially like is how different this is from most biographies and autobiographies.

McGann tells his own and his family's history, but it's actually a history of all of us. How we live. How we sicken and die. What legacy we leave behind us.

Doctor Who Magazine #590

The new issue of Doctor Who Magazine features my interview with Devante Fleming, one of the floor runners currently working on Doctor Who. There's also an infographic by me and illustrated by Ben Morris showing the winners of the reader poll for best Third and Fourth Doctor stories.

Stuart Manning has also written a feature on the first and very different draft script of fan-favourite The Ark in Space, which is being released on audio in June - produced by me. It includes an interview with Jonathan Morris, who adapted the script to work in your ears.

Robert Brown has also interviewed former BBC publicist Jacqui Stonebridge about the early days of Doctor Who - a nice surprise for me as I've seen Jacqui's name on lots of old paperwork recently. And I'm dead envious of my mate Mark Wright getting to interview Dave Gibbons.

David Whitaker at 95

David Whitaker
in Australia, early 1970s

On 18 April 1928, 95 years ago today, David Arthur Whitaker was born in Knebworth.

In 1963, David became the first story editor of the new science-fiction series Doctor Who, and oversaw of 53 consecutive episodes. 

(Two of those weren't broadcast: the unbroadcast pilot was rewritten and re-rerecorded as the broadcast An Unearthly Child, and the two episodes Crisis and The Urge to Live were, after they'd been recorded, edited down into a single episode. I'm not counting the re-recording of The Dead Planet in this total because, so far as we know, the production team worked from the same script so it didn't need David's attention.)

(Also, David didn't receive credit on The Edge of Destruction or The Brink of Disaster because he was the credited writer on those. There's no story editor credited on The Powerful Enemy or Desperate Measures, either, and he may well have written these while still employed as story editor. But paperwork suggested his editorial duties concluded with the episode before that, Flashpoint, so that's where I'm stopping this count. Phew.)

David is also the credited writer on 40 episodes of Doctor Who - more than anyone else in the 1960s, the fourth most prolific TV writer of old-skool Doctor Who (after Robert Holmes on 64, Terry Nation on 56 and Malcolm Hulke on 45 if we count his co-written episodes as 0.5).

Of the 97 missing episodes of Doctor Who, David Whitaker was the credited writer on 18. (John Lucarotti was credited on 11, some co-written, Brian Hayles on 9, Ian Stuart Black on 8.)

David also wrote two of the first three Doctor Who novelisations, co-wrote two of the first three Dalek annuals, co-wrote the first Doctor Who related stage play, polished one of the two Dr. Who movies and probably wrote the bulk of the long running Daleks comic strip.

It's the 60th anniversary of Doctor Who this year, so where was David Whitaker on this day in 1963, his 35th birthday? Well, he was in (or just about to go to) New York in an effort to sell a musical he'd written, Model Girl, with composer George Posford.

Excerpt of letter from David Whitaker
to June Barry, 30 April 1963

Going round the various showbiz houses to schlep his play, he was introduced as, "David Whitaker who drinks sherry."

He returned to the UK around 14 May, presenting his fiancee June Barry with an antique phone, a gift for the flat they were in the process of agreeing to rent after their forthcoming wedding on 8 June.

June Barry in the
Daily Mirror, 3 August 1963

Yes, that's the same top (and same flat) as seen in a 1965 photo shoot of June and David conducted for TV World - the Birmingham-region version of TV Times.

David Whitaker and June Barry
at home, c. May 1965

Daily Mirror, 3 July 1963

(Doreen Spooner, the Daily Mirror's 'camera girl', who took the photo of June with the phone, had the previous month made front-page news with this extraordinary scoop, sneakily shot from the door of a pub toilet.)

David died in 1980 aged just 51. He was still working on Doctor Who. This form recently came to light, proof (at last!) that he'd been working on a novelisation of his 1967 TV serial The Evil of the Daleks.

I wrote a book about The Evil of the Daleks. Later this year, I've got a book out about another of David's Doctor Who stories, The Edge of Destruction.

You can learn more about David Whitaker in the documentary I worked on with splendid Chris Chapman and Toby Hadoke, on the Season 2 box-set released last year.

And I'm currently writing a ginormous biography, David Whitaker in an Exciting Adventure with Television, to be published by Ten Acre Films later this year. I'll end with this lovely note from David to a young Doctor Who fan in 1964...

Letter from David Whitaker
to Doctor Who fan Ian

Masquerade: The Lives of Noël Coward, by Oliver Soden

This remarkable, detailed and insightful biography is a great joy, and in the audiobook version you get the author's impressions of various famous people. The result has been excellent company on a couple of long drives, often making me and other passengers hoot.

Coward would surely have approved the deft mix of comedy and bathos, and perhaps the stylistic flourishes, too. Some bits are related in script form (Soden's own invention, based on documented sources), and there's a final sequence in which Soden vies with (and rolls his eyes at) Coward's other biographers.

I'm especially impressed by the honesty when historical sources are clearly suggestive but we can't know for sure what went on, such as with Coward's early (sexual?) relationships with men. But what really makes this work is the clarity Soden brings. He unpicks the complexities of a whole bunch of different people who often masked their true selves. And he's good on the impact and response to events - whether that's a review, a break-up, a change in legislation. I'm particularly impressed by how vividly he conveys the war: the horror of the Blitz, the work Coward was given (and not given to do), and how that appeared to those not in the know.

Soden briefly covers the moment when, while shooting In Which We Serve (1942), Coward dressed down an actor for arriving late on set, and fired him in front of the whole crew. The story of William Hartnell's tongue-lashing by Noël Coward is also recounted by the film's assistant director Norman Spencer, who says that the role was quickly filled by assistant director Michael Anderson. Spencer expresses shock at Coward's behaviour, and I wonder how Anderson felt about what happened. He later cast Hartnell in Will Any Gentleman? (1953) -- alongside another future Doctor Who, Jon Pertwee -- and I wonder if that was partly from guilt.

(On 25 November 2009, when we recorded my Doctor Who audio story The Guardian of the Solar System, the two actors were required to read in lines as Hartnell's Doctor. Jean Marsh, who had of course worked with Hartnell, advised Niall McGregor to play him as Noël Coward. Which was more helpful than my recommendation to play him as Professor Yaffle from Bagpuss.)

Philip Streatfeild

I should also declare a small interest. Soden contacted me in 2021 about a family connection: my grandmother was the niece of Coward's (probably more than) friend Philip Streatfeild. Sadly, the original, faded photograph of Streatfeild I once found among some old family papers seems to have been mislaid; it was in a terrible state when I unearthed it. But I was able to share what my late father told me, and the result is a footnote in the book that would have delighted him - and has really pleased my mum.

From the index of Masquerade
by Oliver Soden

Soden, in turn, sent me a link to a page about Philip Streatfeild on the Dulwich College website, which includes a poignant letter written by my great-great-grandfather.

The Thirties, by Juliet Gardiner

Having found Juliet Gardiner's history of Wartime Britain hugely useful, I've been making my way through this even more enormous tome, in this case 763 pages before the acknowledgements. Annoyingly, my paperback edition does not include the extensive notes - these were originally included on the publisher's website, but that's long been consigned to history. The internet archive and me writing to the publisher all failed to turn up the notes, so I'll have to invest in a second-hand hardback. Arg.

This annoyance aside, it's another excellent history bringing so much of the past to life. Inevitably, it's not quite as enthralling as the wartime volume, as it can't match that mix of horror, oddness and human interest. I've made numerous notes on stuff that illuminates the early life of David Whitaker for the book I'm writing at the moment. But all sorts of other stuff stands out: the vivid descriptions of the fire that destroyed the Crystal Palace, visible from all over London (from p. 473), or the shocking road-traffic statistics from 1934: 7,343 deaths and 231,603 injuries (p. 679). 

Doctor Who Magazine #589

The new issue of Doctor Who Magazine features interviews with the three directors of this year's forthcoming TV episodes, and has the results of the poll into the best First and Second Doctor adventures. The latter is the subject of my latest "Sufficient Data" infographic, illustrated as always by clever Ben Morris.

I also interviewed Moses Ogundeji, who explains what it means to be "best boy" on the new series recording at the moment. 

Beautiful Shadow - A Life of Patricia Highsmith, by Andrew Wilson

I said in reviewing Martin Edwards' The Life of Crime last month that Patricia Highsmith had been "smuggling her snails in her bra." Edwards was quoting Andrew Wilson's 2003 biography of Highsmith, which a kind friend then sent me.

It's a fascinating story of a fascinating life. Highsmith is a complex, contradictory subject - on several occasions we're given completely different accounts of her, by turns cruel or kind, quiet or outspoken, fearful or bold. There are lots of reasons not to like her - the racism, the snobbery, the meanness with money when she was so wealthy. Yet understanding her background, her relationship (or lack of it) with her mother and her various struggles and heartbreaks makes this a compelling read.

There are all kinds of odd, striking moments. As well as the snails, there's her short-lived relationship with Tabea Blumenschein,

"the 25 year-old star and producer of the lesbian avant-garde pirate adventure Madame X" (p. 366).

Highsmith and Blumenschein spent six days together in a flat in Pelham Crescent, South Kensington, in May 1978 and at one point browsed the record shops. Blumenschein told Wilson that,

"Pat bought me the Stiff Little Fingers record" (p. 367),

presumably the band's debut single "Suspect Device" (released 4 February that year), before they went to dine with Arthur Koestler. The incongruity of that is even more striking when compared to Highsmith's selection the following year for Desert Island Discs: Bach (twice), Mahler and Mozart, and George Shearing's "Lullaby of Birdland".

A number of things made me begin to suspect that Highsmith was neurodiverse, and late on in the book her friend and neighbour Vivien De Bernardi told Wilson,

"In hindsight, I think Pat could have had a form of high-functioning Asperger's Syndrome. She had a lot of typical traits. She had a terrible sense of direction ... She was hypersensitive to sound and had these communication difficulties. Most of us screen certain things, but she would spit out everything she thought. She was not aware of the nuances of conversation and she didn't realise when she had hurt other people," (p. 394).

De Bernardi said this explains why Highsmith's relationships did not last; I think that's a bit glib - and that Highsmith may also have had some kind of attachment disorder, not helped by her (lack of) relationship with her mother. But I'm struck by De Bernardi's perspective of how this neurodiversity impacted Highsmith the writer:

"Although she didn't really understand other people - she had such a strange interior world - she was a fantastic observer. She would see things that an average person would never experience," (ibid).

Wilson has much to say about the content of and responses to Highsmith's lesbian novel The Price of Salt (1952), later republished as Carol and adapted into the acclaimed film. Highsmith originally published the book under a pseudonym and even when it went out in her own name was guarded in interviews about her sexuality. Often, people who knew Highsmith speak of her attitude to women as if from an outside perspective - as if she were a man. Wilson quotes Highsmith's own cahiers (notebooks) at great length, including a passage from 1942 that is ostensibly about other women and yet surely about herself.

"The Lesbian, the classic Lesbian, never seeks her equal. She is ... the soi-disant [self-styled] male, who does not expect his match in his mate, who would rather use her as the base-on-the-earth which he can never be," (p. 48, quoting Highsmith's Cahier 8, 11/18/42, Swiss Literary Archives in Berne).

Repeatedly, Highsmith identified with her most famous fictional creation Tom Ripley, signing a copy of Ripley Under Ground for her friend Charles Latimer as "from Tom (Pat)," (p. 194, but see pp. 194-6, 199, 350 and 454 for further examples). I now want to reread The Talented Mr Ripley (1955) with all this stuff in mind - from a queer (in the sense of both "strange" and "homosexual"), autistic, trans perspective. It's a book about somebody wanting to be and transforming themselves into someone else; an act of disguise that I think, having read this biography, might be very revealing.

Doctor Who Magazine special: Showrunners

The new special edition of the official Doctor Who Magazine is devoted to showrunners and producing the series from 1963 to now. I interviewed Julie Gardiner, executive producer of the series from when it returned to TV in 2005 until 2010, and then again for the episodes that will be broadcast later this year. What a thrill!

In conversation with Fatima Manji - video

You can now watch the video of my interview with Fatima Manji about her book Hidden Heritage, conducted yesterday as part of Macfest.

It's a fascinating book. Among the many stories told, I was much taken by the fact that Abdul Karim, known as the "Munshi", taught Queen Victoria,

"to speak and write in what was then known to Britons as 'Hindustani'; essentially the Hindi and Urdu languages. She learned the Nastaliq writing system of Urdu which itself derives from Persian." (p. 137)

In 1902, her son the Duke of Connaught spoke Urdu when he welcomed dignitaries from India and elsewhere to commemorations relating to the coronation of his brother, Edward VI. As I say in the interview, my grandfather also had to learn Urdu while serving in the British Army in India in the 1930s - he apparently had three months to learn it before undergoing an exam with an Indian examiner; if he failed, he got sent home. Grandpa was then encouraged to learn a second Indian language and learned Pashto, which was of use in his time in the North West Frontier. He was still reasonably fluent in the early 1990s.

But as Manji argues,

"Victoria's enthusiasm for Urdu, her passion for art and culture of the Orient, and her defence of her friend Abdul Karim are admirable. They are under-reported inspirations in Britain's history for us to draw upon. Yet they cannot whitewash her presiding over a repressive, destructive colonial empire. Ultimately it is the structural, and not the personal, that determined the fate of the millions she ruled." (p. 151)

I'm also struck by the story of two Indian brothers fighting on opposing sides in the First World War: Mir Dast was awarded the Victoria Cross by the British; Mir Mast was awarded the Iron Cross by the Germans. Oh, and Manji also speaks to my friend Vinay Patel about his 2018 Doctor Who episode Demons of the Punjab (p. 111).