It's rare to find new adventures of Peter Cushing's Dr. Who in print. There was a comic book adaption of Dr. Who and the Daleks by Dell Publishing in 1966 and that's about it. FANNUAL is all set to change this. For the first time ever, the unofficial Dr. Who is treated to his very own unofficial annual. Most appropriate!

This really has been a labour of love for all concerned, done out of genuine affection and fondness for the films' interpretation of the Doctor Who mythology, and I've had a great response from the people who already have a copy of it.

Time travel. It's supposed to be impossible, isn't it? Well, actually, going forwards in time isn't really a problem at all is it? Just imagine if you could bend the rules . . . Well, I have managed to do just that! Moving freely forwards and backwards through time and space with my own invention is most exciting I can tell you!

1963 was the year it all began. I finally worked out how to make the machine work, and despite the fact that I am a grandfather and quite an old man now, I am still very sprightly because my adventures have given me a new lease of life! Which is just as well, as you will soon discover! Sadly, I can't turn back my own body clock and travel around the cosmos as a young man but I have shared all of the fun with my close friends and family and now I will share it with you . . .

So, let me take a rest from adventuring for a moment to regale some of the tales and the mysteries and challenges we've all faced across the galaxy from visiting our own and other strange worlds, with all of the many unusual and terrifying creatures we have encountered and the new lessons the universe has taught us in the process.

In this book you will find out about myself, my family and friends and the inner workings of my wonderful time machine with a friendly technical diagram highlighting all of the main features.

In my travels I have become caught in events surrounding the civil war of the 1600s, been to a distant alien world in a prelude to a mystery involving a couple I encountered on Barnes Common, and visited the planet Silicus, where I discovered men made of metal! Scary stuff indeed!

I've become a hostage of alien stowaways in my time machine, and on the planet Samsara my granddaughter and I were caught up in a conflict between two sides of the Brethren of Infinity as they waited for their Great Deity to save them from its imminent apocalypse . . .

My friends have even been accidentally miniaturised with one of my other inventions! Oh, the fun they had sorting that out! I've upset a couple of alien traders, encountered familiar-looking robots and landed in one of the most terrible places in human history - No Man's Land during the First World War . . .

I've explored the far side of the galaxy and managed to salvage the cultural heritage of an alien race, and I visited the strange Museum of Space Science in the year 3000 . . .

Also, on a very beautiful planet, my granddaughter encountered an alien prince and the two became romantically involved, which was very sweet. I've defeated evil terrifying robots who enslaved the people of the Earth in the year 2150AD and met intergalactic traders on the War Moon of planet Skirm, and my granddaughter befriended a strange creature on yet another alien planet, unaware that it was actually plotting to kill her at the first opportunity!

I've upset The Knights of Chronos, who are the self-styled guardians of time, and they put me on trial for creating a temporal paradox by returning a policeman I had met to 1966 before he actually left with me on my travels! Most confusing!

Anyway, you can find out about it all for yourself in detail in this marvellous book. I had hoped to write more about my adventures but I am so very busy exploring as I just don't want to miss out on all of the wonders and secrets the universe has to offer before, one day, I have to retire.

I know this sounds like the witterings of a mad old man but I can promise you that these events did actually happen! Enjoy this volume compiled by my friends and travel with me into this fantasy world that I have made a reality!

For five decades, the name Verity Lambert appeared on the end credits of many of Britain's most celebrated and talked-about television dramas, among them Adam Adamant Lives!, Budgie, The Naked Civil Servant, Minder, Edward and Mrs Simpson, Eldorado, G.B.H. and Jonathan Creek. She was the very first producer of Doctor Who, which she nurtured through its formative years at a time when there were few women in positions of power in the television industry. Later, she worked within the troubled British film business and became a pioneering independent producer, founding her own highly successful company, Cinema Verity.

Within her profession, she was hugely respected as an intensely driven, sometimes formidable but always stylish exponent of her craft, with the stamina and ability to combine quantity with quality.

Many of her productions have had a lasting cultural and emotional impact on their audiences and continue to be enjoyed to this day. But who was the woman behind all these television triumphs and what was the price she paid to achieve them?

Combining months of painstaking research and interviews with many of Lambert's closest friends and colleagues, Drama and Delight will capture the energy and spirit of this remarkable woman and explore her phenomenal and lasting legacy.

...thank you [readers] and retailers on both shores for trusting this American upstart to handle your beloved 50-year-old Time Lord; thanks to the BBC for giving us this shot in the first place, and a final note of gratitude to all the creators who made for such companions along the way.

Prominent figures in numerous fields are considered by the Board on the basis of their continuing achievements, and ultimately selected due to their exceptional pre-eminence.

What is it that really puts the stamp of eminence on a modern British life? Two things count today: having an entry in Who's Who and being asked to choose your eight favourite records on BBC's Desert Island Discs.

GOLD, Murray Jonathan; writer and freelance composer; b Portsmouth, 28 Feb.

1969; s of Lenny and Suzanne Gold. Educ: Corpus Christi Coll., Cambridge (BA

Hons Hist. 1991). Composer: for films: Beautiful Creatures, Wild About Harry, 2000;

Miranda, 2002; Kiss of Life, 2003; Alien Autopsy, Mischief Night, 2006; Death at a

Funeral, I Want Candy, 2007; for television: Vanity Fair, 1998; Queer As Folk, 1999

(RTS Award for Best Original Score); Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased), 2000–01;

Clocking Off, 2000–02; Shameless, 2004–11; Casanova, 2005; Dr Who, 2005–12;

Torchwood, 2006–11; Sarah Jane Adventures, 2007–11; The Devil's Whore, 2008;

Single Father, 2010; Scott & Bailey, 2011–13; Last Tango in Halifax, 2012; writer:

plays: Resolution, Battersea Arts Centre, 1994; 50 Revolutions, Whitehall, 2000;

Electricity, Radio 3, 2001[sic], W Yorkshire Playhouse, 2004 (Michael [sic] Imison Award for

Best New Radio Play, 2002); radio play, Kafka the Musical, 2011 (Tinniswood

Award for Best Original Radio Drama, 2013). Address: c/o Cathy King, Independent

Talent Group Ltd, 40 Whitfield Street, W1T 2RH; c/o Becky Bentham, Hot House

Music, Abbey Road Studios, 3 Abbey Road, NW8 9AY.

FANTOM PUBLISHES WILLIAM HARTNELL BIOGRAPHY

Saturday 23rd November 1963 saw the broadcast of the very first episode of Doctor Who. Little did they realise that some 50 years later the BBC TV programme would be one of the most popular series on television, watched by over 165 million people worldwide!

As the twelfth incumbent of the TARDIS takes charge this Christmas, our attention turns to the first actor to play the Doctor in those first black and white years…

From light musical comedy to a succession of mean crooks and bullying sergeant-majors, William Hartnell’s long and varied career included a number of iconic British films including Carry On Sergeant, This Sporting Life and Brighton Rock. However, it is for his role as a time-travelling eccentric that he is most fondly remembered.

With the broadcast of a docudrama Adventures in Space and Time, chronicling the genesis of Doctor Who and the life of William Hartnell, Fantom have published a biography of the actor, written by his granddaughter Jessica Carney entitled Who’s There.

"A fascinating and very moving account of a complicated and talented actor. William Hartnell rose from the humblest beginnings to become a heavyweight screen star and, ultimately, an unlikely hero to millions of children as the first Doctor Who.” Says writer and actor Mark Gatiss. “In this 50th anniversary year, it's wonderful to see how Jessica Carney pulls together all the threads of a tangled life in such a sympathetic but honest fashion. Bill was no saint but he emerges as a fully-rounded, difficult and fascinating personality in this splendid biography.”

Hartnell played the very first Doctor from 1963 – 1966, pitting his wits again many foes and monsters including the Daleks and the Cybermen, laying the foundations for what was to become a global institution.

Jessica Carney’s closely researched biography of her grandfather includes stories from many of the hundreds of stars of stage and screen with whom he worked, among them Richard Attenborough, Verity Lambert, Bob Monkhouse, Carole Ann Ford, David Langton and Lindsay Anderson.

Who’s There: The Life and Career of William Hartnell is now available from Fantom Publishing in hardback and on Audio, read by companion actress Anneke Wills.

An Adventure in Space and Time delves into the origins of Doctor Who and William Hartnell's involvement with the show - but on which day in 1963 was the contract issued to the man who would bring the First Doctor to life and launch a 50 year old legend?

"These extraordinary books are like weird, grotesque shadow-versions of the Show we recognise. They are mutations haunting the wilderness between the domed, protected cities of Canonicity. The world of the Annuals is odder, darker, madder, more psychedelic and surreal. These are adventures in a wilder, destabilized universe. The cosiness of what we recognise as Doctor Who has gone."


Continuing our recent tradition of doing Doctor Who non-fiction titles, next year will see Obverse Books publish, in hardback, The Annual Years, a serious and detailed look at that most maligned of Doctor Who storytelling, the World Distribution annuals.

From 1965 to 1986, from William Hartnell to Colin Baker, the annuals were weird and witty and wonderful, a big brother to TV Comic and second cousin to Doctor Who Discovers... - and they all the more beloved by us because of that.

With cover art and internal illustrations by Adam Bullock, and commentary on every single story from Paul Magrs, author of Doctor Who fiction for Big Finish, the BBC and AudioGo, this is the celebration that the annuals have long been overdue!

Nothing O'Clock
Written by Neil Gaiman
Published 21st November 2013

Thousands of years ago, Time Lords built a Prison for the Kin. They made it utterly impregnable and unreachable. As long as Time Lords existed, the Kin would be trapped forever and the universe would be safe. They had planned for everything… everything, that is, other than the Time War and the fall of Gallifrey. Now the Kin are free again and there’s only one Time Lord left in the universe who can stop them!

Nothing O’Clock stars the Eleventh Doctor, the Matt Smith Doctor, with Amy Pond as his companion. I set it somewhere during the first season of Matt Smith, mostly on Earth, in our time now and in 1984, but also somewhere else, a very, very long time ago. I had never created an original monster for Doctor Who and really enjoyed getting to create a creepy Doctor Who monster of the kind that we haven’t quite seen before... I hope that the Kin will get out there and occasionally give people nightmares. And that you will be worried if a man in a rabbit mask comes to your door and tries to buy your house.

Name a televised story of Doctor Who that was (definitively) set in 1984.

The Essential Guide to 50 Years of Doctor Who
Written by Justin Richards

This essential guide to fifty years of Doctor Who includes all eleven incarnations of the Doctor and fascinating facts on his adventures in space and time, as well as his helpful companions and fearsome foes. Find out all about the Doctor's TARDIS, his regenerations, and much, much more!