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Author. Born: 1935 Writer and producer who gave Douglas Adams his first break and kept 'Doctor Who' going during troubled times
The generous and modest writer Anthony Read gave Douglas Adams his first television commission, successfully fighting doubtful BBC executives to launch a young writer whose undisciplined but bountiful imagination he was convinced was a potential goldmine. But Read should also be remembered in his own right, as a television producer and script editor who helped Doctor Who through troubled times and helped rejuvenate Hammer Films, and as a fine children's author and a sensitive, engaging historian.
He was born in Staffordshire in 1935. His father, a miner, died when Read was seven, leaving his mother, a dressmaker, to raise him alone. After Queen Mary's Grammar School in Walsall he studied acting at the Central School of Speech and Drama and founded a touring company, Theatre Unlimited, but his theatrical career was short-lived, and after a stint as an advertising copywriter, National Service as a gunner with the Royal Artillery and a job as editor at Jonathan Cape, he joined the BBC in 1963.
He script-edited a series of Sherlock Holmes dramatisations starring Douglas Wilmer which were popular but fraught with difficulties; it was valuable experience, Read earning himself a reputation as a safe pair of hands and regularly being called upon thereafter when programmes were in crisis. Aptly, his first producing job was on The Troubleshooters (1966-70), a saga of oil company skulduggery....