Sophie Neville

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Sophie Neville became inadvertently well known as a girl when she starred as ‘Titty’ in the 1974 movie ‘Swallows and Amazons’. Forty years later, she was persuaded to bring out an ebook on ‘The Secrets of Filming Swallows & Amazons’. This attracted such over-heated headlines in the Times and Telegraph that she was commissioned to write ‘The Making of Swallows and Amazons’, now published by The Lutterworth Press.

Although useless at sailing, Sophie became President of The Arthur Ransome Society in 2014, giving talks at cinemas and literary festivals. She was commissioned to write articles for the Daily Telegraph, Country Life and DVD Extras for Revelation Film, along with forewords for ‘Swallowdale‘ by Arthur Ransome, ‘Swallows, Amazons and Coots’ and ‘An A-Z of Cumbria and The Lake District on Film’. She has been speaking on BBC Radio and nearly capsized on ITV News.

Sophie appeared on BBC Antiques Roadshow on 9th May 2021, talking about items relating to her book ‘The making of Swallows and Amazons’. You can listen to her speaking about this on BBC Radio here and find behind-the-scenes photos with links to BBC iPlayer here.

Sophie has a degree in Anthropology from Durham University and background in television production. She began working at the BBC as an assistant on drama serials such as ‘Doctor Who’, ‘Eastenders’ and ‘My Family and Other Animals’, before directing her first documentary for Channel 4 when driving from London to Johannesburg. After directing a number of comedy dramas, she produced an Inset series, set up a Blue Peter summer exploration of South Africa and worked freelance for the BBC Natural History Unit in Botswana and Namibia. As trustee of The Waterberg Trust, she organised five challenge rides in Southern Africa where she was based for twelve years while working as a wildlife artist and cartographer. While living in the African bush she put together two illustrated memoirs: Ride the Wings of Morning and Funnily Enough, which was serialised in iBelieve magazine and hit #1 in Humour on Amazon Kindle in the UK.