A “splendidly entertaining” biography of the British tv writer acclaimed for his invention of a fictional alien race for Doctor Who (Dominic Sandrook, author of State of Emergency—The Way We Were: Britain 1970–1974). The Daleks are one of the most iconic and fearsome creations in television history. Since their first appearance in 1963, they have simultaneously fascinated and terrified generations of children, their instant success ensuring, and sometimes eclipsing, that of Doctor Who. They sprang from the imagination of Terry Nation, a failed stand-up comic who became one of the most prolific writers for television that Britain ever produced. Survivors, his vision of a post-apocalyptic England, so haunted audiences in the Seventies that the BBC revived it over thirty years on, and Blake’s 7, constantly rumored for return, endures as a cult sci-fi classic. But it is for his genocidal pepperpots that Nation is most often remembered, and now, more than 50 years after their creation they continue to top the Saturday-night ratings. Yet while the Daleks brought him notoriety and riches, Nation played a much wider role in British broadcasting’s golden age. He wrote for Spike Milligan, Frankie Howerd and an increasingly troubled Tony Hancock, and as one of the key figures behind the adventure series of the Sixties—including The Avengers, The Saint and The Persuaders!—he turned the pulp classics of his boyhood into a major British export. In The Man Who Invented the Daleks, acclaimed cultural historian Alwyn W. Turner, explores the curious and contested origins of Doctor Who’s greatest villains, and sheds light on a strange world of ambitious young writers, producers and performers without whom British culture today would look very different.

Terry Nation was one of the most successful, prolific, and celebrated writers for popular television that Britain ever produced. His late 1970s science fiction seriesSurvivorsandBlake's 7have been durable, cult and critical hits, both being remade 30 years later. His most famous creations, theDaleks, ensured, and at times eclipsed, the success ofDoctor Who. Indeed, almost half a century after their first appearance in 1963, new additions toDalekmythology continue to be made, while the word itself has entered the Oxford English Dictionary, passing into the language as the name of the most famous race of aliens in fiction. While his science fiction work remains at the core of his appeal, Nation also had a role to play in the early days of radio and television comedy—as part of the legendary Associated London Scripts, he wrote for Spike Milligan, Tony Hancock, and Frankie Howerd—and in the internationally successful adventure series of the 1960s:The Avengers,The Saint,The Persuaders!, and others. This account of his life and contributions will shed light on a fascinating melting pot of ambitious young writers, producers, and performers without whom British culture today would look very different.

It was the eleventh day of the school holidays and Rebecca was bored. But events take a dramatic turn for the better (or worse) when she finds herself transported to a distant planet whose people are terrorized by jelly-like monsters called Ghosts. Suggested level: primary, intermediate.

A chain of events has been set in motion that will change the Doctor and Peri forever. A chain that involves old enemies as well as old friends. How does Peri come to be the leader of a gang of rebel fighters on an outlying planet? Who is the mysterious 'General' against whom they are rebelling so violently? Where does the so-called 'Supremo', leader of the Alliance forces ranged against the General, come from, and why is he so interested in Peri? The answers lie in the origins of a conflict that will affect the whole cosmos - a conflict that will find humans, Sontarans, Draconians and even Cybermen fighting together for the greater good and glory. For the Supremo. It is a conflict that will test both the Doctor and Peri to the limit, and bring them face to face with the dark sides of their own personalities.

The first life of the man who was Lord Peter Wimsey, Bertie Wooster and starred in I’m Alright, Jack! With the death of Ian Carmichael in 2010 one of the last links was lost with the golden age of British cinema. Carmichael starred alongside Terry-Thomas and Peter Sellers in the Boulting brothers’ classic satirical comedies I’m Alright, Jack! Private’s Progress and School for Scoundrels. He summed up, on screen and in life, the kind of Englishman who was beginning to emerge after the war – educated, not necessarily upper class, upwardly mobile and a study in good manners and a sense of fair play – and thus played the straight-man foil to the distracted ravings of his wilder co-stars. Subsequently, he became Bertie Wooster in a highly successful television series based on P.G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves stories. He also made the part of Lord Peter Wimsey his own in another long-running adaptation of Dorothy L. Sayers’ famous detective novels, and was still acting on television well into his eighties alongside Susan Hampshire in ITV’s drama series The Royal.

This books traces the rise to prominence in the twentieth-century of a sub-genre of gothic fiction that is, emphatically, a horror of enlightenment rationality rather than gothic darkness, examining post-modern revisions of Modernist “Promethean” tropes in an eclectic range of gothic, fantasy and SF writing. Whether the subject be terror of London’s churches in the psychogeographical fiction of Iain Sinclair and Alan Moore, the Orcs in the linguistic fantasies of J.R.R. Tolkien, King Kong, killer-computers, or demon-children in post-war British science-fiction, A Book of Monsters offers illuminating perspectives on the darker recesses of the post-modern imagination, setting out a compelling, and comprehensive, overview on our contemporary unconscious.

SPECTATOR BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2015 Britain's empire has gone. Our manufacturing base is a shadow of its former self; the Royal Navy has been reduced to a skeleton. In military, diplomatic and economic terms, we no longer matter as we once did. And yet there is still one area in which we can legitimately claim superpower status: our popular culture. It is extraordinary to think that one British writer, J. K. Rowling, has sold more than 400 million books; that Doctor Who is watched in almost every developed country in the world; that James Bond has been the central character in the longest-running film series in history; that The Lord of the Rings is the second best-selling novel ever written (behind only A Tale of Two Cities); that the Beatles are still the best-selling musical group of all time; and that only Shakespeare and the Bible have sold more books than Agatha Christie. To put it simply, no country on earth, relative to its size, has contributed more to the modern imagination. This is a book about the success and the meaning of Britain's modern popular culture, from Bond and the Beatles to heavy metal and Coronation Street, from the Angry Young Men to Harry Potter, from Damien Hirst toThe X Factor.