Fred Hamilton - Zoom In When You See The Tears
30 Adventurous Years at the BBC

After emigrating to Britain in the 1950s, Fred Hamilton joined the BBC’s Film Department where he learnt the ropes and was quickly promoted to Film Cameraman. Coverage of sports events soon became his bread and butter job, followed by assignments to armed conflict areas in many parts of the world. Obtaining footage to be broadcast on Panorama and other current-affairs programmes often under perilous circumstances. He teamed up with reporter James Mossman and recordist Freddy Downton, surviving the jungles of Borneo, the battlefields of Vietnam and the Middle East.

As a member of the Film Department, he would be called to take part in various projects including iconic shows such as Doctor Who, starring Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee, as well as a numerous episodes of Z Cars, Out of the Unknown, Doomwatch, Colditz and Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

With colour television still in its infancy, Fred filmed the eye-opening sequences for Paul Temple with directors Douglas Camfield and Mike Ferguson. In 1977 he was brought in by director David Wickes as establishing cameraman on the BBC’s ambitious first all-film television series Target, whose production history was almost as spectacular as the on-screen events depicted. Fred became a man for ‘action scenes’ before the phrase even entered the BBC vocabulary, always on the lookout for that unusual, extra dynamic shot.

Committing his memories of an impressively colourful professional life to paper, Fred Hamilton tells the story of a man totally dedicated to his job, whose accounts are enriched by hilarious anecdotes involving many BBC legends.

This autobiography is a fascinating insider’s view of the BBC, lavishly illustrated throughout with never before seen, exclusive photographs from Fred’s personal archives

The Man Who Invented the Daleks
The Strange Worlds of Terry Nation

Terry Nation was one of the most successful and prolific writers for television that Britain ever produced. Survivors, his vision of a post-apocalyptic England, so haunted audiences in the Seventies that the BBC revived it over thirty years on. Blake’s 7, constantly rumoured for return, endures as a cult sci-fi classic. And his most fearsome creations, the Daleks, ensured and at times eclipsed the success of Doctor Who.

Indeed, almost half a century after their first appearance, new additions to Dalek mythology continue to top the Saturday-night ratings, while the word itself has entered the Oxford English Dictionary, passing into the language as the name of the most famous race of aliens in fiction.

But while his genocidal pepper pots brought him notoriety and riches, Nation played a much wider role in British broadcasting’s golden age. As part of the legendary Associated London Scripts, he wrote for Spike Milligan, Frankie Howerd and an increasingly troubled Tony Hancock. And as one of the key figures behind the adventure series of the Sixties – including The Avengers, The Saint and The Persuaders! – he turned the pulp classics of his boyhood into a major British export.

Like Arthur Conan Doyle before him, Nation was frequently bemused by the appeal of his most famous creations, and similarly cavalier toward them. Now, The Man Who Invented the Daleks explores their curious and contested origins, and sheds light on a strange world of ambitious young writers, producers and performers without whom British culture today would look very different.

Alwyn W. Turner is the author of a number of acclaimed books on modern British culture, including Crisis? What Crisis?: Britain in the 1970s, Rejoice! Rejoice!: Brtain in the 1980s, Halfway to Paradise and The Biba Experience.