 Richard Carpenter
Richard “Kip“ Carpenter was born in King’s Lynn, Norfolk,
(England) in 1933.
He worked as an actor for 17 years before he finally changed his profession to that of an author and script-writer. He spent the greater part of his childhood in Norfolk and grew up with Greek mythology, Comics “Beano” and Shakespeare.
His interest in the theatre and acting eventually took him to the “Old Vic Theatre School” and to repertoire theatre.
During this time he already began writing short stories for the radio.
After one year at the Old Vic he started working on television, appeared in a number of films but was mainly active as a character presenting actor in British television.
Richard Carpenter appeared in hundreds of TV productions, (actually more than 300!)
In 1969 he started concentrating on writing.
The first work he wrote was “Catweazle”, which developed into such a success that it gave him the decisive breakthrough to being a successful author.
Meanwhile he is counted into Great Britain’s most important script writers.
In fact the idea for “Catweazle” came to him by chance:
One weekend, when he was driving to the countryside with his wife to see his brother-in-law, who was running a turkey farm in East Sussex then, hey decided to take a different route on their way home from that which they had come.
They got lost and found themselves in a narrow country road.
There Richard Carpenter suddenly noticed a fence with the word “Catweasel” on it. “What an unusual name,” he thought and wrote it down on a little piece of paper, put it in his pocket and forgot about it.
Later when he was going to take his trousers to the dry cleaners he found the note again and began reflecting upon that name. It at once occurred to him that it would be a great name for a magician.
He was given another inspiration by the painting by Hieronimus Bosch called “The Crowning with Thorns”, which he saw in a book. In this painting he noticed a figure that matched his imagination of the wizard called Catweazle. Catweazle, he thought, has to be exactly like that character!
So he step by step began writing those stories so well-known to us.
From the very beginning, he had seen
his old friend and acting mate in the main part and wrote it for him.
He changed the original word “Catweasel” slightly into “Catweazle” so that it had more of a hissing sound when said.
After “Catweazle” which he was awarded the “Writers’ Guild Award” the best TV drama script for, a lot of other works and prizes followed.
For example he wrote dozens of episodes of the ITV series “The Adventures of Black Beauty”. “The Boy from Space” and “Cloudburst” were written by him for the BBC school programme “Look and Read”. From his hand is also the very successful children’s fantasy series “The Ghosts of Motley Hall” (1976-1978).
In addition to that the family series “Dick Turpin”, two very popular adventure series “The Smuggler” and “The Adventurer” as well as several episodes of the cartoon series “Doctor Snuggles”, which became well-known in Germany, too.
In the year 1983 he gained similar cult status as with “Catweazle” with “Robin of Sherwood”.
This series, which became internationally known, was not short of magic, either.
For example, in the episode “Rutterkin” his wife Annabelle Lee and her “Spiritus Familiaris” (in the shape of a piglet) appeared.
In spite of its enormous success the series was taken off the programme after three runs because there had been a change in the management of Granada Television.
And, just the same as with “Catweazle” scripts and concepts for a continuation have been gathering dust on shelves for years.
It may be mentioned that Richard
Carpenter was in fact planning to realize a
continuation of “Catweazle”, meaning a third, new
series.
The third continuation of “Catweazle” was planned to be about Catweazle landing his hot air balloon on the Bennets farm and meet
Edward again. This time there would have been also a
girl character, too.
But all this did not take place for several reasons: The director of the first “Catweazle” series. Quentin Lawrence, had unexpectedly died and neither Richard Carpenter nor Geoffrey Baldon were interested in a continuation with a new director and possibly in a new style.
In addition to that there were changes taking place in the head department and management of London Weekend Television (LWT), in charge of production.
In 1999 Richard Carpenter wrote some episodes of the BBC adaptation of “Scarlet Pimpernel” (starring Richard E. Grant).
His series “Out of Sight” (1996) got him the “Writers’ Guild of Great Britain Award”. Of the more recent works of Richard Carpenter “Stanley’s Dragon” is to be mentioned (1994) as well as “I Was A Rat” (in German: “Ich war eine Ratte”) BBC (2001), an adaptation of the book by Philip Pullmann.
For the adaptations of Mary Norton’s “Borrowers”-books “The Borrowers” and “The Return of the Borrowers”, both BBC series, Carpenter was awarded “Best Children’s Drama Award” BAFTA TV and an international Emmy nomination.
Richard Carpenter rewrote many of his former scripts as novels on sale in book shops such as Catweazle, Catweazle and the Magic Zodiac, Cloudburst, The Ghosts of Motley hall, Smuggler, Dick Turpin and Robin of Sherwood.
The two Catweazle books “Catweazle” and “Catweazle and the Magic Zodiac” (German title “Catweazle sucht die magischen Zeichen”) have been edited and re-edited for more than 25 years.
Richard Carpenter is married to actress Annabelle Lee and they have two children, Tom and Harriet.
His hobbies are, next to others, painting, sculpturing, Jazz, and talking about all sorts of things.
External links:
Filmography
of Richard Carpenter at IMDb
www.boldoutlaw.com: Interview with Richard Carpenter
about his series "Robin of Sherwood"
Wikipedia about Richard Carpenter (German)
Wikipedia about Richard Carpenter (English)
Internal links:
Two interesting Interviews with Richard Carpenter can be
found at the page "Articles":
"Richard Carpenter - An
Interview"
"Richard Carpenter - A
Catweazle Start..."
 |
Deutsch
Fan Club
printable version
