Sophie Neville taking part in Race for Reading in 2023
I’m raising funds for the UK charity Schoolreaders by litter picking as I walk along the South Coast of England this May. Tax efficient donations can be received on my Race for Reading page where I will keep a record of the distance covered. When going onto the event platform we recommend you set the fee for Enthuse as £0. My company will double any amount you can give and make a real difference to providing child literacy whilst fostering a love of reading in the UK.
As an author supporter of SchoolReaders I act as their legacy ambassador and have taken part in a couple of Race for Reading challenges. A £20 note once floated towards a member of my team, which was encouraging.
Raising funds for SchoolReaders
My aim is to walk 40 miles, collecting flotsam and keeping a diary to record anything weird I find along the way. When I took up the challenge in 2022, I came across all kinds of unexpected things.
I’ve started my clearing rubbish along the estuary where I love, finding some pretty elderly items. This muddy tiger cheered me up.
There is so much litter that I progress slowly. Some items can be difficult to reach. My mileage is low but one supporter, Chris Holmes, reckons that one large bucket = a mile of litter picking, which is about right. They can weigh up to 4Kgs and I can’t carry much more.
I can add a buckets-worth of clear plastic bottles that went into a recyling bin enroute.
This bucketful was collected above the tideline but includes items brought down by floodwater that were languishing in out riverine nature reserve posing a threat to wildlife.
Once on the foreshore I find rope – short lengths of PVC including torn fishing nets and lengths of fishing line. There are so many tiny pieces of plastic flotsam that I begin to count. I filled this bucket with 105 items and tucked in another thirty on the way back. I only covered about 2 miles but was drained of energy.
The disposable cup had a pebble inside. If it’s owner had planned to sink it, they then replaced the lid and it landed on this all but forgotten shore.
After being lucky enough to play the heroines in both ‘Swallows and Amazons’ and an adventure movie called ‘The Copter Kids’, a transgender role came my way.
I was asked if I would mind playing a Dutch messenger boy in ‘Kidnapped’ produced by HTV and Tele München Fernseh Produktionsgesellschaft (TMG) in 1978. It was a high profile television series at the time–a TV movie made in glorious locations, but my part was tiny.
Appearing as a messenger boy in ‘Kidnapped’ produced by Patrick Dromgoole for HTV.
I was literally given five minutes notice. They happened to be using a film location in Bisley, near my home in the Cotswolds, and had forgotten to cast the boy who brought a key message to the hero played by the German actor Ekkehardt Belle.
The formidable producer, Patrick Dromgoole, knew my little sister Tamzin had played Elka in ‘Arthur of the Britons’, which he’d produced in 1970. Tamzin had been carried out of a Saxon longboat in Oliver Tobias’s arms and rode over the hills with Michael Gothard.
Tamzin Neville with Oliver Tobias in ‘Arthur of the Britons’
Looking back, Patrick Droomgool may have asked if Tamzin had been available but any child under sixteen, including his own boys, would have needed a licence to act from the Department of Education. These took at least six weeks to come through. Being seventeen I had no need of one and yet was in the rare position of possessing an Equity card. Did my smart London agent broker the deal? No, my mother did. I knew the Robert Louis Stephenson’s story, put down my A’Level revision and agreed to take on the little part. I had nothing to lose.
The Scottish actor David McCallum was on set, starring in the series as Alan Breck Stewart, the Culloden hero. I had seen ‘The Great Escape’, ‘Colditz’ and knew him as The Invisible Man but had no idea that he had played The Man from U.N.C.L.E., a role that had made him something of a sex symbol in America. He is said to have received more fan mail than any other actor in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s history. He went on to star in ‘Saphire and Steel’ with Joanna Lumley and played the pathologist Dr “Ducky” Mallard in 460 episodes of ‘NICS’, the popular American crime series on CBS-TV. I gather he really disliked being famous. I was surprised to find that at 5’7″ he was shorter than me.
Ekkehardt Belle was only a few years older than me and gorgeous. He played the modest but handsome young David Balfour in search of his rightful inheritance. The ensuing adventure took him to the Netherlands where our scene was set. It was Sophie and the sex symbols – only I was made up to look like a grubby guttersnipe in tattered clothing and looked most unattractive.
My job was to dart across a courtyard and present the hero with an important message sealed with wax and wait for instruction before disappearing down an alley. I had to react to his response but had no lines, nothing to say.
The only difficult thing was coping with the cold. It was freezing and I was dressed in very little. No thermal vest or longjohns were provided. The peculiar item in the left hand side of the photo above is a snow machine. Real snow would not have been unexpected. Patrick Dromgoole was sympathetic and offered moral support as we waited for camera track to be laid.
The scene took a while to shoot thanks to various set ups that included a top shot of me running though the snow as the end credits roll.
Sophie Neville as a messenger boy in ‘Kidnapped’. There were very few female parts in the epic series
‘Kidnapped’ can now be watched on Youtube. It takes you back to the ‘seventies but is pretty clonky. I had to sit through the whole series to find our scenes at the end of the story. You won’t be able to spot me. I recognise the location and can just see myself dashing though an establishing shot . The delivery of the message – once thought so vital – seems to have been cut. I do not appear in close up, I was given no credit. It was all for nothing, apart from the fact that I was paid rather well for a teenager.
The theme music was memorable. You can see me briefly with the ducks in a single shot after Christopher Biggins (playing the Bonnie Prince) sends David McCallum packing. Watch if you dare. It all looks so dated.
To finance my way through university, I registered with an agent in Bournemouth called Lenny and appeared in the background action of about sixty dramas including ‘Tenko’ and ‘Agatha’. You can read a little more about my brief career as a film extra if you scroll down on this website here. It was a good, if humbling, way to gain experience in film and television production, but I never worked with David McCallum again. I can’t remember any more sex symbols but I played a guest at ‘Murder at the Wedding’ with Christopher Biggins, and found myself in Ronnie Barker’s arms. That was fun.
I’ve written more about my adventures in film and television in my book ‘Funnily Enough’, which is now available on Audible and other audio book platforms.
Funnily Enough – the paperback with black and white illustrations
Sophie Neville as Titty – a photo montage of put together by a fan of the film
Google my name and you will come across rather astonishing newspaper headlines ingrained in the internet’s listing system. They are remarkably popular articles. I woke one morning to a comment from Australia alerting me to a peTITTYon in the Daily Telegraph – you could cast your vote online ‘More support for Titty!’ was one cry.
Everyone, it seems, wants to know what it is like to be called Titty.
It is a titualar title in that I have no power. I can do little more than respond with good humour to those who see me as a living representative of ‘Swallows and Amazons’. Like it or not, letters, emails and messages keep arriving addressed to Titty. They are all wonderful, some so enchanting they have been kept along with the old black and white stills taken on location. I attempt to answer each one.
Simon West as John and Sophie Neville as Titty on location on Peel Island, 1973
Having been known as Titty since 1973, I automatically respond when the name is called and wave back, as I’m sure the Able-seaman would. It is quite fun seeing the reaction of passers-by if children call out ‘Titty!’ when they see me coming, but as one church warden pointed out, ‘At least your real name is not John Prescott.’
I found there was a Facebook group called ‘Titty from Swallows & Amazons is one hot cookie.’ When I asked to join the group, all the other members fled. You can see for yourself. It is still there. I am pretty sure they were a group of fashion students – or hope so.
Sophie Neville as Titty Walker
What creepy people don’t seem realise is that I can see the words typed into search engines that bring people to my own website. I’ve had some crackers. It was the navy blue gym knickers I wore to play the part of Titty that attracted quite a bit of unfortunate attention. I had to remove a few photographs featuring this particular item of my costume and talk about the green parrot instead. Children often ask if I still have one.
Susie, Taqui, Titty and Roger Altounyan in 1928
Although Titty Walker is a fictional character, with adventures of her own, she was inspired by a real child known to Arthur Ransome when he was writing ‘Swallows and Amazons’ back in 1929. I have written about her here and have more photos of her on this website. Titty Altounyan’s real name was Norah Mavis Altounyan but she preferred the nickname of Titty. Ransome explained in a note to Miss Joyce Cartmell that ‘Titty is short for Tittymouse which is what she was called when she was a baby. Nobody ever calls her anything but Titty now’. Tittymouse was a character in English folktale Titty Mouse and Tatty Mouse.
If anything, Titty Altounyan lived rather reluctantly with the fame that came along when the novel became a bestseller. Her descendants were upset to hear that the character’s name was changed to Tatty in the 2016 film adaptation of ‘Swallows and Amazons’. Her daughter was tearful about the lack of consultation and her niece outraged. They saw it as ‘history being re-written’. Ransome was a journalist but what he would have thought of the editor of the Guardian coining the ‘Titty Tatty’ story, which others called ‘Tittle-Tattle’ or the ‘Tittygate debate’, I do not know.
Simon West and Sophie Neville bring Swallow into the Secret Harbour on Wildcat Island
I learned that it wasn’t until after 1929, that the word ‘titty’ took on meaning as a mammary gland. The character’s name was changed to Kitty when the BBC made a black and white television serial of the book back in 1962 when Susan George played the part. Ransome was still living in the Lake District at the time. He seemed to accept the name change, but loathed additions to the story-line and the attitude of the director who had wanted to blast rocks from the entrance to Peel Island on Coniston Water. As you can see from an earlier post, I was contracted to play the part of ‘Titania’ in the movie made in 1973, but the name TITTY was typed throughout the screenplay. Mrs Ransome was the script editor.
Sophie Neville as Titty and Stephen Grendon as Roger rowing to Cormorant Island
Ransome’s brilliance was that he made Able-seaman Titty, the little sister into the heroine of ‘Swallows and Amazons’. CS Lewis did the same by making Lucy Pevensie heroine of ‘The Chronicles of Nania’. It is not surprising that most little girls reading the story want to ‘be Titty’. They find the syllables easy to pronounce and don’t give a second thought to an alternative meaning to the name. It is accepted as genuine, and they tend to regard jokers as immature. ‘May I call you Titty?’ one five-year-old asked. What could I say? She knows that her cat has titties on her tummy but that’s not rude and it’s no reason to change the name in her eyes. I am assured that girls in the US don’t bat an eyelid. Boys may snicker at first but are soon swept away by the story.
The new audiobook
You can read about how I came by the part and what it was like to be on location in ‘The Making of Swallows and Amazons’ now available as an audio book.
The crossed flags my publisher asked me to draw (with permission) that were later used on the call sheet of the 2016 movie.
Sophie Neville, who played Titty in the original film ‘Swallows and Amazons’, gave a special talk on what is was like to take the lead part in a feature film at the Museum of Carpet in Kidderminster, on Saturday 21st February.
Richard Pilbrow, who produced the original film ‘Swallows and Amazons’ had been married to Vicky Brinton whose family donated many of the items on display at the former mill, along with a huge poster in the conference room.
Sophie was born in Worcestershire, seven miles from the venue. Her great-grandfather, Canon Hastings Neville, was a curate in Kidderminster and one of his ten sons, the Olympic athlete Dick Neville, pioneered the manufacture of woolen carpets in New Zealand, developing a crossbreed of sheep for the purpose. In 1960, he employed Richard Pugh-Cook who returned to the Midlands and founded the Museum of Carpet thirteen years ago.
About seventy people packed into the conference room to listen to the talk, which enjoyed a great response. “The degree of factual information contained in it is amazing…all those details of 50 years ago conveyed with such clarity and enthusiasm!”
“….such an inspiration to so many people especially younger people who have such different lives these days – another era then, it seems, but one we should not forget.”
“a great success – everyone seemed to have throughly enjoyed your talk, hearing about the other side of filming!”
Sophie signed copies of her books after the talk when she had a chance to meet ‘Swallows and Amazons’ enthusiasts and a little girl hoping to become a film actress. The event was covered in the local news.
A long-forgotten photograph of Sophie Neville aged 21
I reached the end of 2025 wondering what on Earth I’d accomplished apart from clearing out my mother’s house – an irksome project as she’d lived there for sixty years, but I found a lot of photos, piles of hand-written letters and other relics from making the original film ‘Swallows and Amazons’, including a news cuttings book and other finds, which I added to this website. I came across more graphics only yesterday, so watch this space.
Sue Anstruther, Alex Moore and Sophie Neville signing books at Riverside Studios in Hammersmith
February 2025, marked my first Doctor Who convention, when I was invited to speak on the panel after a screening of ‘Vengeance on Varos’. Great fun!
The fans have worked out that those on the production team have lots of stories and I was made very welcome. I’d forgotten that I had invented Varian knitting or wore red in the studio. Sadly, Nabil Shaban, who played our monster, Sil, was too ill to join us and died in October 2025.
Sophie Neville working on ‘Doctor Who’ with Nibil Shaban, Martin Jarvis and Forbes Collins
However, it was great to be reunited with other members of the cast including Geraldine Alexander who rushed over from the set of ‘Bridgerton’, and Colin Baker who I’d also worked with on ‘Coot Club’. You can read more about the day on this website.
Rob with Sophie Neville, Geraldine Alexander, Nicola Bryant, Stephen Yardley, Colin Baker and Forbes Collins
As a member of a film crew you are busy but invisible until your name is worthy of a credit. As a writer you are invisible until you win an award. One of my screenplays written in 2024 reached the semi-finals of the Scriptwriters & Co International Festival, which was exciting.
I was awarded an Honourable Mention for excellence in screenwriting at the glitzy International Film Gala in London, when I was joined by Lucy Calcott who has been editing my work.
This script was one of ten finalists in the Pitch Now screenplay competition.
I won a Lonely Wolf screenplay award, was in the running for a Creative Worlds Award
Being nominated and winning a screenwriters award at the New Media Film Festival in Los Angeles was exciting. While in Spain, I took part in an onscreen Writer’s Block Q&A chaired by Dr. Maya Rockeymoore Cummings and was interviewed by Susan Johnston on what I’ve learnt as a writer. (I’ve learned that smelt is spelled smelled in America!)
The same WWII story won a genre award in the Page Turner Awards and another was shortlisted in their Culture Award.
Right at the end of the year, literally on 30th December, I won the Eyelands Book Award for an unpublished historical novel, which was encouraging. It’s the third award they have bestowed on me. I absolutely treasure the ceramic tree trophies.
From August 2025 onwards, I helped Children in Read raise nearly £10,000 for BBC Children in Read by taking part in an online charity book auction, which was fun and involved dialogue with many amazing writers.
It was great to receiver this illustrated review of the film ‘Swallows and Amazons’. My non-fiction books received flattering online reviews, which is always appreciated and Resolute Books inspired me to bring out my memoires as a trilogy of life as a single girl. This is exciting but on the back burner for now.
The Gondola on Coniston Water today, re-built and restored by the National Trust.
Meanwhile the National Trust asked if they could use my ‘Swallows and Amazons’ map of Coniston Water to promote MY Gondola’s cruises.
Map showing film locations around Coniston Water
Items featuring this map and others can be purchased from Redbubble:
Mugs printed with maps used to illustrate Sophie’s books
Meanwhile, real life continued to plung forward. We’ve had our house on the market and, whilst my mother was diagnosed with medium dementia, she refused to leave home. It made finding time for anything else tricky, but I managed a little litter picking.
We ploughed on with sorting through the vast number of letters and photographs Mum had stored all a-muddle.
What a task! As one friend said, ‘it’s bad enough finding homes in the house for things that come in use, let alone things that don’t!’
I was beginning to feel overwhelmed when I was asked to knit poppies for a commemorative installation at church. This was so calming that I made about 150 whilst watching dramas. My excuse for imbibing every crime serial available is that I need to examine script construction. I shot footage of our ‘towering achievement’ for BBC South Today and aided a drone photographer who took this shot for The Guardian and other national papers.
For some years now, I have been the webmaster for The Waterberg Trust, a UK registered charity supporting amazing projects in a corner of rural South Africa. We sponsor the role of the only school nurse working in the Limpopo Province. Along with caring for pupils, she has established four school vegetable gardens and distributes food parcels to those in need. I’ve started a project knitting hats to take them as an encouragement in 2026.
You can read about life at my parents’ house in my memoir ‘Funnily Enough’, which won a Rubery Book Award when it first came out and is now available as a paperback for £7.99, on Audible and other audiobook platforms. The illustrations look best on the ebook version. You can see a free sample here.
Funnily Enough – the paperback with black and white illustrations
A book signed by the author always makes a good Christmas present. Each year, I take part in an annual online charity auction organised by Children in Read to raise funds for BBC Children in Need.
You can scroll through the site on Jumblebee. co.uk. and choose from an amazing selection of biographies and other books donated by contemporary authors.
Taking part is always great fun and offers authors a bit of publicity whilst presenting readers a choice of signed and dedicated books and illustrations.
In 2023, items in the Authors and Illustrators’ auction, raised a total of £24,061 for BBC Children in Need.
This year, authors and illustrators raised £9,766.
Over the eleven years that the annual event has been running a stunning total of £141,766 has been raised. I joined in 2020 and have raised a total of £616 for this cause.
Bidding has now closed but put the event in your diary for next year.
Daphne Neville with Sophie Neville while filming ‘Swallows and Amazons’ in Cumbria in 1973
It wasn’t until we were making preparations for the 50th Anniversary of the EMI film ‘Swallows and Amazons’ that I began to list all the work my mother, Daphne Neville, accomplished behind-the-scenes.
Daphne Neville accompanying Suzanna Hamilton, Kit seymour, Sten Grendon, Simon West, Sophie Neville, and Lesley Bennett out to the houseboat on Derwent Water
When I was offered the part of Titty Walker, she’d been invited to work as a chaperone, along with Sten Grendon’s mother, Jane Grendon. This proved to be a pretty demanding job. Getting us ready and into the minibus every morning alone must have been challenging. We stayed at the Oaklands Guest House where there were only two bathrooms shared between twenty-three residents – the eight of us, various students from the Charlotte Mason College of Education and the five members of the Price family who owned the house. We had to move out over Whitsun when it had been booked by holiday makers.
Dressed for the Cumbrian weather: Daphne Neville with Liz Lomas ~ photo: Richard Pilbrow
Mum was pretty horrified by the spaghetti hoops, cuppa soups and pasties given to us for supper and asked if we could have a fruit bowl in our school bus. Location catering in 1973 was good but aimed at providing electricians with meat and two veg, rather than food for children. We enjoyed salads and chicken drumsticks but baked beans could ruin a take and sugared food made us over-active and probably annoying.
Suzanna Hamilton, in her red tracksuit top, seeing what the location caterers had for lunch on the set of ‘Swallows and Amazons’ by Coniston Water
On film sets you normally have female costume assistants or dressers to help change actresses into their costumes. On ‘Swallows and Amazons’ we had Terry Smith the wardrobe master and my mother. Whenever there was a scene with film extras, Mum helped him to fit them with shoes and hats, helping the ladies into costumes for the opening scene at the station.
Wardrobe Master Terry Smith with Sophie Neville and her mother Daphne Neville outside the Make-up caravan on location near Keswick in Cumbria
Our hair was cut and looked after by Ronnie Cogan but mine had to be washed every night by Mummy. She moved me into her bedroom, which was tiny, but had a basin. This seems a small thing, but watch the film and you see my hair flying around the whole time indicating the ever-present wind.
Daphne Neville and Richard Pilbrow on Peel Island on Coniston Water in 1973 Amazons
Mum tried to keep us warm on location, getting us into life jackets and sunhats before we were taken off to the set, which was often either a boat or island.
Daphne Neville with Sophie Neville and Simon West on Coniston Water
Having won prizes for archery, she taught the Amazons to shoot with a bow and arrow for their scene on Wild Cat Island.
Daphne Neville teaching Lesley Bennet, who played Peggy, how to shot with a long bow
She also took a vast collection of behind the scenes photos, some of which were very good.
Ronald Fraser with Daphne Neville and Sophie Neville on Derwentwater in 1973
I couldn’t bear it when Ronnie Fraser flirted, but Mum enjoyed every moment of being on set. She longed to appear in the film as a supporting artist. My father, Martin, appeared in five different shots but Mum missed the crowd scene at Bowness and sequences taken aboard the MV Tern the next dau.
Jane Grendon with other film extras on the original movie ‘Swallows and Amazons’
Back home, she had a part-time job working for HTV who had given her leave but called her back to Bristol to present an episode of Women Only and promote the channel at the annual Bath and West Show. You can read more about this on her website here.
Suzanna Hamliton, Simon West, Claude Whatham Sophie Neville, Kit Seymour, Jean McGill with Daphne Neville kneeling at Blackpool funfair in 1973
While other members of the film crew were given one day off a week, our chaperones’ work never ended. Jane took us shopping or on walks up into the fells. Mum came with us on a trip to Blackpool.
Sophie Neville having her hair cut on location for the part of Titty Walker in 1973
She must have driven me to Epsom for a pick-up shot in September when members of the Walker family had more haircuts and enjoyed being reunited.
Daphne Neville with Stephen Grendon, Suzanna Hamilton, Sophie Neville, Jane Grendon and Simon West
While we hated the publicity that came with marketing the film, Mum embraced it to the full, collecting every newspaper and magazine article.
Sophie Neville, Suzanna Hamilton, Daphne Neville, Lesley Bennett, Kit Seymour, Sten Grendon and Simon West off to the Puffin Club Party at the Commonwealth Institute in London
She took us to London for a Puffin Club show at the Commonwealth Institute devised by Kaye Webb,
Kaye Webb’s Puffin Club Show – April 1974
and to the Lord Mayor’s Show when we rode on a float set up by EMI Films.
Suzanna Hamilton, Stephen Grendon, Leslie Bennett, Simon West and Kit Seymour sailing the streets of London in ‘Swallow’
Mum was thrilled when invitations to the film premier arrived and bought me a green dress to wear to the ABC Cinema in Shaftesbury Avenue where it was held.
Daphne Neville at the London premier of ‘Swallows and Amazons’ in Shaftesbury Avenue.
She framed a film poster and kept every photo, every scrap of paper related to the film along with the LP and other items of movie memorabilia.
Fifty years later the items were valued on BBC Antiques Roadshow as being worth over £4,000.
To read Daphne Neville’s articles on being a chaperone, please find three earlier posts on this website beginning here.
The Saucepan and her mother on a scenic railway in Cumbria in 1973 ~ photo: Martin Neville
Like Arthur Ransome, I have ‘lived many lives in one.’ He also wrote, ‘Memory picks and choses’. Here are a few unusual ones:
A photograph of Sophie Neville photoshopped to look like Charlotte Rampling for ‘Broadchurch’
This gave me a fright: I was watching the ITV police series Broadchurch when I saw a photograph of me, aged seventeen, featured on screen. Only it wasn’t me. My face had been photo-shopped to look like a young Charlotte Rampling. Above is a screenshot. Here is the original:
Sophie Neville aged seventeen
No one had asked my permission, but what can I do but take it as a compliment?
Around this time I was briefly involved in the HTV seriesKidnapped. I played a boy. But opposite David McCallum (The Man From U.N.C.L.E), so who was I to argue. And I was paid.
I got the part in an odd way. They had forgotten to cast anybody for the role, but the producer had previously cast my sister in Arthur of the Britons and knew we lived only a few miles from the location. I agreed on the morning the scene was shot.
Appearing as a messenger boy in ‘Kidnapped’ produced by Patrick Dromgoole for HTV. What did they do to my hair?
I later stood in for the little boy who played Gerald Durrell in the first BBC drama series of My Family and Other Animals. Brian Blessed thought it hilarious. I was working behind the camera by that time but was skinny enough to squeeze into the costume.
Sophie Neville standing in for the boy playing Gerald Durrell getting a kiss from Brian Blessed who played Spiro
I was once on a train when the director of Obsessive Compulsive Cleaners asked if I could get to Gloucestershire to clear out my mother’s attic. I ended up filming with him for the next three or four days. It was exhausting – and unpaid – but a lot of de-cluttering got done. Check the apron from Seville. I’d bought it on honeymoon.
Sophie Neville filming in Gloucestershire with Betty TV
Piratøen – is the title for Swallows and Amazons in Danish – seen here on a flier that I only came across recently. I’d just had my DNA analyzed to discover I am 3% Danish due to admixture a few generations back. Do I look Danish?
Although I’ve worked on over 100 films and tv programmes, I have mostly been behind the camera, so don’t expect anyone to know who I am. They don’t. The marketing executive at StudioCanal had not, at first, wanted me to help promote the remastered DVD of ‘Swallows and Amazons’, which is understandable as Dame Virginia McKenna has the star billing. Then she must have watched the ‘filmen for hele familien’. I ended up giving Q&As at twelve cinemas. Some had audiences of 250 and the screenings were so popular that customers were being turned away.
Sophie Neville giving a Q&A in Kendal
And yet when a friend of mine told a lady that I was in ‘Swallows and Amazons’ she smiled apologetically and said she’d keep ‘an eye out for me.’
‘Why are you here?’ I was asked at Windermere Jetty in Cumbria. We had gathered to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the release of ‘Swallows and Amazons’ in cinemas. How should I have answered that question? I replied saying, ‘I’ve been asked to give talk.’
Sophie Neville appearing on BBC TV at Windermere Jetty in Cumbria
You can now listen to the story of how the original film of ‘Swallows and Amazons’ was made on Audible.
The HTV series ‘Kidnapped’ (1978) is available on YouTube. Blink and you miss me, but the music is wonderful.
Having won a Top Three Scripts award at the New Media Film Festival in Los Angeles, Sophie was asked about her screenwriting.
Can you tell us a little about how you got started?
I began writing for BBC Television at the age of twenty-two. It was a disaster. Instead of presenting a polished script, I produced a rough draft that I thought we could develop in the rehearsal room. Developed it was – by Nicholas Parsons, one of the stars. He rewrote his own soliloquy, taking all the credit and a substantial fee. I’ve welcomed harsh feedback from beta readers ever since.
What was the biggest challenge you faced in your journey to becoming a writer? How did you overcome it? Can you share a story about that that other aspiring writers can learn from?
Instant success with my first book was challenging. My illustrated memoir FUNNILY ENOUGH was at number 1 in Humor on Amazon Kindle in the UK (after free copies had been downloading at the rate of 250 a minute) but I had self-published, and had no team support. Instead pressing the go-button with a PR firm and marketing team, I was weigh-laid by the small stuff. Writers need skilled networks in place, especially in the age of New Media.
Funnily Enough – the paperback has black & white illustrations
It has been said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
I began my career in television by working with children. I could see the potential and it gave me a niche, but the hazards were numerous.
A teacher opened one scene for me by saying, ‘Some people believe the world is flat.’ A five-year-old called out, ‘No, but it’s not! It’s bumpy.’ The mistake was that we had too much camera judder – my cameraman had dissolved in hysterics. A lesson learned: I used a tripod when capturing the opinions of eleven-year-olds. The results were so amusing that they were repeatedly endlessly when Daytime TV was launched in the UK.
Sophie Neville directing a sequence with BBC cameraman Lorraine Smith
What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now?
I felt compelled to write A BOY CALLED FREDDIE when I discovered Freddie Mercury, escaped from the violent 1964 Zanzibar revolution at the age of seventeen. If a year older, the man who became an international rock idol would have been forced into slave labour on coconut plantations. As it was, his family fled to London where his talent flourished and found stardom. Born Farrokh Bulsara, he became known as Freddie at school. The story of how he chose the name Mercury involves NASA but is only revealed in my screenplay – right at the end. Freddie’s father, Bomi, was a Parsee who worked as a cashier at the law courts where my Great-uncle Ronnie served as Chief Justice. I’ve been able to draw on my cousin’s stories of life in the heady days before a convicted rapist from Uganda brought mayhem to the archipelago of tropical islands, forcing the Sultan to escape by sea, along with my aunts and a plucky English women who had set up free and fair elections a month before mass murder broke out akin the movie HOTEL RWANDA (2004).
I’m also developing THE MEETING HOUSE, an exceptional true story from WWII about an East African serviceman I met who was airlifted out of a POW camp in Japan by his boyhood friend just before America bombed Tokyo. They landed in Silesia in the snow, which he’d only seen previously on the peak of Kilimanjaro, where he was born.
Can you share the most interesting story that occurred to you in the course of your career?
Film fans love to hear about disasters that befell us while making the EMI movie ‘Swallows and Amazons’ before the advent of CGI. I was persuaded to write THE MAKING of SWALLOWS and AMAZONS, now published by The Lutterworth Press.
Editions of ‘The Making of Swallows & Amazons (1974) by Sophie Neville’
Although it’s been screened on television more times than any other British movie, it remains a classic that some have never heard of. ‘Why are you here?’ I was asked at the 50th Anniversary screening.
‘I’m giving a couple of talks on how the film was made,’ I muttered.
‘How would you know how it was made?’
‘I was there.’ In almost every scene. ‘I worked on it.’
‘You couldn’t have been,’ the man insisted.
I could only take this as a compliment, but he looked aggrieved.
Sophie Neville, Suzanna Hamilton and Kit Seymour in Cumbria
StudioCanal also thought I was an imposter as Dame Virginia McKenna had the star billing. Then the marketing executives watched the movie. When the DVD was launched they had me hosting Q&As at twelve cinemas and provided footage for all manner of TV programmes from CINEMANICS with David Wood the screenwriter to BBC BREAKFAST with my co-star Suzanna Hamilton.
Sophie Neville, Suzanna Hamilton and Kit Seymour on BBC Breakfast
I’m currently working on an inspiring comic tale: BANANA MAN, THE TRUE STORY about Phil-the-Geek, a shy but good looking physicist, who increased the national consumption of bananas by 20% after exploiting a supermarket deal and making 8 pence on every bunch he bought – and gave away. His story hit international News headlines and won him the heart of a beautiful girl. I was her bridesmaid. Last week, their daughters have just graduated from Yale and Harvard, respectively. I intend to present the family with a fruit bowl.
Here is the main question of our interview. Based on your experience, what are the “5 Things You Need To Be A Successful Author or Writer”? Please share a story or example for each.
Focus, forbearance and a five am start to the writing day are key, but I often come up with vital twists while soaking in the bath tub. I guess this is because my brain works best at periods of least resistance. The problem is that I end up groping for a notebook with wet hands.
Please share a story or example for each.
Personality, productivity, perseverance, patience, and a broken heart. We need to touch the audience with humor, in small ways that are easily identifiable. I have a scene in one novel about a man on the cusp of falling in love who loses his car keys in the heat of the day and is left feeling a fool in front of the girl he wants to impress. It’s based on the time I found my ignition keys with my feet. They had fallen into sand beneath the door of my car when I was driving through Botswana. The relief following this small miracle is etched deep in my soul.
In your opinion, were you a “natural born writer” or did you develop that aptitude later on? Can you explain what you mean?
I would describe myself as a ‘natural born story-teller’. Having a visual brain, I became a television director, attracted to Mike Leigh’s emerging art of improvisation on film. When on the converted BBC Drama Director’s Studio Course, I gave my actors the task of flirting whilst erecting a tent. It worked exceptionally well, except that they enjoyed the exercise so much it went on a little long. I should have provided them with earpieces to bring the story to a timely end.
We all need to hone the craft of writing. I had the amazing opportunity of assisting on drama serials such as ‘Doctor Who’ and ‘Eastenders’. Looking back, I could have become a BBC script editor. Instead, I’ve spent the last twenty years attending Curtis Brown Creative novel writing courses and acquiring the art of writing about love under the Romantic Novelists Association’s New Writers’ Scheme. Entering writing competitions has proved an incentive and the wins help build my CV. The competition is such that we need to build a pedigree and provide consumer confidence.
Which literature do you draw inspiration from? Why?
I write true-life stories set in the 20th century, so draw on any memoirs or biographies I can find. I love amusing autobiographical novels, such as Fran Hill’s trilogy on life as a teenager in foster care. She is a master craftsman and a truly inspirational writer. I feed off her infectious humour poured out to the world on Substack.
You are a person of enormous influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
Forced marriage needs to be recognized as conjugal slavery and made illegal worldwide. Female circumcision (FGM) needs to stop before more lives are lost to infection. I have no personal experience, but feel we must all speak out to support those unable to do so.
Sophie Neville 