Neil Paterson (writer)

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James Edmund Neil Paterson (31 December 1916-19 April 1995), known as Neil Paterson, was a Scottish Academy Award winning screenwriter.

Contents 1 Early life and football career 2 Writing career and later life 3 Selected bibliography 4 Selected filmography 5 References

[edit] Early life and football career

Born in Greenock, Renfrewshire (now part of Inverclyde), to parents J D Paterson and Nicky Kerr,^{[citation needed]} Paterson graduated from the University of Edinburgh and had a brief career in senior football. He played for Scottish League teams Leith Athletic and Dundee United, becoming captain of the latter in the 1936-37 season. Despite his success in football he remained an amateur player, spurning the opportunity to go professional.^[1].

[edit] Writing career and later life

After his football career finished he became a writer, initially as a sports journalist for D.C. Thomson and after the Second World War as an author, penning a number of well received novels and short stories. In 1953 he adapted his own short story The Kidnappers for the cinema and subsequently wrote a number of screenplays, including the Academy Award-winning script for Room at the Top in 1959, adapted from the novel by John Braine. Paterson won the Atlantic Award for Literature in 1946. Later he served as a governor for the British Film Institute, National Film School and the Arts Council of Great Britain and as an executive for Grampian Television. He died in 1995 at Crieff, Tayside (now part of Perth and Kinross).

[edit] Selected bibliography

• On my Faithless Arm (1946) (Under pseudonym John Kovack)
• The China Run: Being the biography of a great-grandmother (1948)
• Behold Thy Daughter (1950)
• The China Run: A book of short stories (1951)
• Man on the Tightrope (1952)
• Man on a Tightrope: The Short Novel (1953)
• The Kidnappers and other Stories (1957)
• Something like a poem (1986)

[edit] Selected filmography

• The Kidnappers (1953)
• Man on a Tightrope (1953)
• Devil on Horseback (1954)
• The Woman for Joe (1955)
• High Tide at Noon (1957)
• The Shiralee (1957)
• Innocent Sinners (1958)
• Room at the Top (1959)
• The Spiral Road (1962)
• The Kidnappers (1990)

[edit] References

1. ^ Independent Obituary