Kneale, Nigel

▪ 2007

      British scriptwriter (b. April 28, 1922, Barrow-in-Furness, Lancashire, Eng.—d. Oct. 29, 2006, London, Eng.), introduced science fiction to British television in the 1950s, notably as the author of the wildly successful horror-filled serials featuring alien fighter Prof. Bernard Quatermass—The Quatermass Experiment (1953), Quatermass II (1955), Quatermass and the Pit (1958), and Quatermass (1979)—all of which were adapted for the big screen. His other work included the groundbreaking 1954 TV adaptation of George Orwell's 1984 and BAFTA-nominated screenplays for the film versions of John Osborne's Look Back in Anger (195) and The Entertainer (1960). Kneale won the Somerset Maugham Award for his early short-story collection Tomato Cain and Other Stories (1949). His son, Matthew Kneale, was awarded the Whitbread Book of the Year for his novel English Passengers (2000).

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