The Kneale Archives

We are pleased to honour and celebrate the work and legacy of truly one of the world's greatest screenwriter and author has ever seen. 

Thomas Nigel Kneale is one of the most celebrated authors of the modern TV and film age. He was a prolific writer and, in addition to his own works of psychological horror and science fiction, wrote numerous adaptations of contemporary stories for film and television in a career that spanned almost sixty years.

 Kneale was born in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria to Manx parents: journalist William Thomas (known to his family as Tom) Kneale and his wife Lilian, née Kewley. The family returned to the Island in 1928 when Nigel’s father became assistant editor on the Isle of Man Examiner. In 1930 a second son, Bryan was born, the renowned artist.  Soon after, Nigel’s father acquired the Mona’s Herald newspaper in partnership with his brother Robert G Kneale.

By the age of twenty-four Kneale had written a number of short stories in his spare time and, in 1946, made his first broadcast on BBC Radio, performing a live reading of Tomato Cain. In the same year he moved to London where he studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), followed by two years’ work at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon. During this decade he made further broadcasts and published Tomato Cain and Other Stories in 1949, for which he won the Somerset Maugham Award the following year. Kneale’s first professional script was the radio drama The Long Stairs in 1950. The next year, he gained a job as a staff writer at the BBC where he remained until 1956. Thereafter he was able to focus on his writing and freelance work.

 In 1953 Kneale wrote the ground-breaking The Quatermass Experiment, the first popular science fiction television series. The lead character, Professor Bernard Quatermass, was reprised by Kneale in numerous televisions series, films and radio plays from 1953 until 2005, and it is for these that Kneale is most widely known.

Kneale was prolific and wrote many other works of horror and science-fiction for film and TV such as The Year of the Sex Olympics (1967) and The Stone Tape (1972). He also adapted novels for the screen: 1984 (1954) and The Woman in Black (1989) for example. He was unafraid to experiment with many other genres, as evidenced by Kinvig (1981), his sole situation comedy. After 1974 Kneale spent the rest of his television career mostly writing scripts for Independent Television (ITV), contributing to series such as Sharpe (1993-1997) and Kavanagh QC (1995-2001).

During the early 1950s, Kneale met talented writer Judith Kerr, daughter of a refugee German theatre critic, Alfred Kerr and composer Julia, née Weismann. Kneale and Kerr married in 1954 and had one daughter, Tacy (b.1958), an actress, painter and film prop artist and, in 1960, a son, Matthew, now a renowned writer. Kerr went on to become a hugely successful children’s author, publishing works such as The Tiger Who Came to Tea (1968) and the Mog series (1970-2015). In 1962 the couple settled in Barnes, London, remaining there for the rest of their lives.

The Kneale Archives at the Manx Museum

The content relates mainly to Nigel Kneale’s creative writing, providing a unique insight into how his works, both unproduced and produced, were developed. Many projects can be followed through from initial research, story outlines and treatments, to first and subsequent drafts with amendments, rehearsal and production scripts and finally to documents relating to production and reception. Business correspondence with the BBC and other employers, newspaper reviews, audience research reports and some contemporary advertisements of the productions are also included. 

Out of Kneale’s produced works the resources for Quatermass (1953-1996), The Year of the Sex Olympics (1968), Kinvig (1981), Stanley and the Women (1991), Sharpe’s Gold (1995) and Kavanagh QC III: Ancient History (1997) are particularly notable. Regarding his unproduced works The Big, Big Giggle (1965), Crow (1975-77), Non-Stop (1984-88), Gentry (1987-88) and Batavia (1990) content is also noteworthy. 

Accompanying the manuscripts are photographs belonging to Kneale spanning 1950s-1970s (PG 13645). Contents include portraits and stills from productions of Nineteen Eighty Four, Quatermass, Quatermass II and Mrs Wickens in the Fall; also props created for certain productions.

 Acknowledgements

We are grateful for the invaluable support of Tacy, Matthew and Bryan Kneale RA, Jane Asher, Judith Coke, Ra Page/Comma Press, Caitlin Shannon, Jane Wymark and the expert assistance of the dedicated Manx National Heritage staff at the Manx Museum Library.