Ian Dickerson

Sadly Donald James, who contributed many scripts to many ITC shows, has passed away.

This is from booktrade.info:

Donald Wheal, better known to fiction fans by his pen name Donald James, was a prolific book and TV writer whose career stretched for over fifty years. Born to working class parents in Chelsea's World's End, Donald wrote movingly of his family and Blitz childhood in his recent critically acclaimed memoirs World's End (2005) and White City (2007). Having survived the bombing which destroyed his childhood home and killed many of his friends and neighbours, Donald's family moved to the White City area of London. Obsessed with self-improvement, his father arranged for Donald to travel to France in 1946 and thus began the author's obsession with the history and politics of Post War Europe. His National Service eventually led to a commission and a spell as an intelligence Officer in Trieste. He later joined the Parachute Regiment before reading History at Pembroke College Cambridge.

After Cambridge, and now married with twin daughters, he embarked on a hugely successful career as a TV scriptwriter on shows such as The Avengers, Space: 1999, The Champions, The Persuaders!, The Saint, Department S, UFO, The Protectors, Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), The Adventurer and Mission: Impossible.

Under the name Donald James he will be remembered for the bestselling novel The Fall of the Russian Empire (1982), which anticipated in uncanny detail the fall of Soviet Communism, and the three acclaimed thrillers Monstrum, The Fortune Teller and Vadim (1996-2000), set in a futuristic Russia of 2015 where totalitarianism had returned, and featuring his greatest fictional creation, Inspector Constantin Vadim. Donald lived in France with his third wife for many years and in the novel Walking the Shadows (2003), he explored the ghostly legacy of the Vichy years of World War 2. There followed Donald's two autobiographical memoirs of his childhood. He is also the co-author of the classic reference work, The Penguin Dictionary of the Third Reich (new edition 2002). He also wrote novels under other pseudonyms such as Thomas Dresden and James Barwick (with Tony Barwick).

Donald's novels are imbued with a rich humanity, a wry sense of humour and a sharp eye for injustice. He was blessed with an ever youthful, inquisitive mind, always open to fresh ideas and experiences. He was also totally self-effacing, never talking up his own accomplishments; in fact many of his closest friends didn't know of his family's straitened past until they read about it in his memoirs. In later years he was extremely moved by the mail he received from childhood friends after the the publication of World's End. Donald was at work on his last novel at the time of his unexpected death.

Ian

Lord Brett

Thanks for posting that, Ian. A very talented writer and a great loss.

julian_craster

From Times Online
July 2, 2008
Donald James [Wheal]: screenwriter and novelist

Donald James Wheal, better known by his pen name, Donald James, was a prolific, best-selling author who began his career as one of a select band of screenwriters instrumental in shaping popular British television drama in the 1960s and 1970s.

He won his first commission in 1964, with a script for No Hiding Place, ITV’s bestknown early police drama. Over the next 15 years he went on to work with many of television’s top producers, including Lew Grade, Monty Berman, Gerry Anderson and Brian Clemens, penning more than 250 scripts for iconic shows such as The Avengers, The Saint, Space: 1999, The Champions, The Persuaders!, Department S, UFO and Mission: Impossible.

A fascination with the history and politics of post-war Europe, engendered by a visit to France in 1946, offered Wheal a change in direction when, in the late 70s, American drama imports began to replace home-grown series. He wrote his first, highly acclaimed thriller, A Spy at Evening in 1977. An immediate success, adapted and serialised by the BBC, it revealed the consummate talent for tight storytelling, sharp dialogue and political insight that distinguished a host of his subsequent best sellers. Shadow of the Wolf (1978), offered a “factional” account of the conspiracy surrounding Hermann Hesse’s flight to Britain in 1941; The Fall of the Russian Empire (1982), anticipated the end of Soviet communism with uncanny prescience. More recently, he returned to the best-seller lists with the acclaimed crime trilogy, Monstrum, The Fortune Teller and Vadim (1996-2000). Set in a future Russia where totalitarianism rules once more, the novels feature perhaps his greatest creation, Inspector Constantin Vadim.

He was also a respected non-fiction writer, the author of the Penguin Dictionary of the Third Reich and a contributor to A Dictionary of the Second World War, but he showed his surest storytelling touch in two powerfully moving volumes of memoirs, World’s End and White City.

World’s End (2005) is a vivid evocation of London in the late 1930s and early 1940s, told through the story of his family’s struggle to survive the Second World War. He was nine when war broke out, part of a tight-knit, hard-pressed working family in Chelsea's grimy, poverty-stricken World's End. In 1944, when he was 14, he survived the bombing that destroyed his childhood home, killing many of his friends and neighbours.

In the follow-up volume, White City (2007), Wheal describes his coming of age amid the austerity of post-war London, a story shaped by his father’s determination to overcome the family’s social disadvantages and help his two sons to fulfil their potential. He succeeded. Both he and his younger brother Keith won places at Sloane Grammar School, becoming the first in their family to be educated beyond the age of 13. Wheal went on to win a scholarship to read History at Pembroke College, Cambridge; his brother became European Managing Director of a major multinational corporation.

After National Service and Cambridge, and now married with twin daughters, Wheal returned to London to work in PR, as a supply teacher and at the Daily Telegraph library, before his break into television.

The warmth, humour and honesty that characterises his autobiographical writing also defined his private life. He was an irreplaceable friend, mentor and supporter not just to his large, extended family, but to many friends and colleagues all over the world.

Wheal had just completed his latest political thriller when he died unexpectedly at home in London.

Donald James Wheal, screenwriter and novelist, was born on August 22, 1931. He died on April 28, 2008, aged 76