S02E36 Minuke by Nigel Kneale

Minuke by Nigel Kneale Nigel Kneale Nigel Kneale was born in Barrow in Furness in 1922, which was then part of Lancashire “North of the Sands”, and since 1974 part of the modern county of Cumbria. He died in 2006 in London.  Neale’s family came from the Isle of Man, which is clearly visible from the coast of Cumbria. I saw it yesterday but not today as it was too rainy. The family went back to the Isle of Man when he was six (finding Barrow too rich for their blood no doubt) and was educated in Douglas, the island’s capital. His father was editor of the local newspaper. Kneale went to study law but got bored with the legal profession. Apparently he tried to join the British army at the start of the Second World War but was declared medically unfit due to photophobia.  He wrote short stories and read out his own story Tomato Cain on the BBC in 1946. Inspired by the reception his story got, he went to London to study acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.   He then got involved in a voice acting and writing melange of a career on the broadcast media, writing his first script in 1950. His most famous work was the Quatermass Series, a horror science fiction drama series on the BBC which was a massive success. You can find this and his later great success The Stone Tape on Youtube. He did an adaptation of Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black in 1989. He adapted some of the Sharpe novels in the 1990s which were also a great success. He was invited to write for the X-Files but declined that job. So, Neale was a big cheese up until recent times. His work, particularly Quatermass and The Stone Tape are canons of British hauntology these days. Minuke Or, if I hadn’t done it northern ‘my nook’. But ‘nook’ it is to us.  This story is from the collection Tomato Cain and Other Stories published by Collins in 1949. The book is out of print and second-hand copies are going for nearly £400. I didn’t buy one. It was requested by a listener and I was only too happy to oblige.