- Born
- Died
- Born in the Staffordshire mining village of Cheslyn Hay in Staffordshire on April 21st 1935 Anthony Read studied acting at the Central School of Speech and Drama and following National Service he worked in Fleet Street. During the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s he was in great demand as a television writer and script editor, working on many popular series. He continued to write for television into the 1990s, although by this time he was better known as a historian and author, with numerous books published, including several co-written with David Fisher, a former television colleague. Anthony died on 21st November 2015.
- IMDb mini biography by: Anonymous
- SpouseRosemary Kirby(1958 - November 21, 2015) (his death, 2 children)
- Studied acting at the Central School of Speech and Drama.
- Winner of the Wingate Literary Prize for Kristallnacht: The Unleashing of the Holocaust.
- Douglas's (Douglas Adams) enormous talent was immediately apparent to me as soon as I saw his first scripts for The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1981), which is what led me to commission him. It was not always easy to see what would work on screen, but I knew there was enough there, if I could shape it correctly. He had that amazing imagination, firing off in all directions, some of which were right for Doctor Who (1963) and some of which were following quite different conventions - the jokiness of the series at the time was always a very fine line which had to be walked with great care, and Douglas was naturally inclined to leap all over it, given half a chance. The big problem was that Douglas seemed to have absolutely no idea of shape and form for narrative drama; and, despite all the sci-fi effects, Doctor Who (1963) is essentially about telling stories within a proper, conventional dramatic structure. No matter how brilliant the imaginative ideas, the basic rules of drama still apply. When this is forgotten, the series fails.
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