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.
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.
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.
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.
Then two reached the finals of the Screencraft’s True Story screenplay competition. There were only eight other finalists.
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
and on the Cannes Screenplay List. All this was followed by a feature interview in The Church Times, a profile of my writing to date and a few other author interviews when I was asked unexpected questions about my past.
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!)
Meanwhile, one of my stories reached the finals of the prestigious American Christian Fiction Writer’s Genesis Contest and a silver coat pin arrived in the post.
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.
Meanwhile the National Trust asked if they could use my ‘Swallows and Amazons’ map of Coniston Water to promote MY Gondola’s cruises.
Items featuring this map and others can be purchased from Redbubble:
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.
After taking my mother for a holiday in Pembrokeshire, we found her a place at Denville Hall, the amazing retirement home for those who have worked in the entertainment industry. She appeared briefly on ‘The Repair Shop Christmas Special’, which I profiled on her website. I added some of the old photos of her early career as a television presenter and have started giving a series of illustrated talks to the residents. The first one was on her work behind-the-scenes on the original movie ‘Swallows and Amazons.’
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.
Sophie Neville 