Launched in 2000, Northern Ireland Screen’s Digital Film Archive spans from 1897 to the present day and currently contains an ever-expanding catalogue of 13,000 items. It comprises material from a variety of depositors including feature films, sport, documentaries, animation, amateur footage, light entertainment, and a significant proportion of broadcast material from the UTV Archive.
Sally Beauman / Ned Sherrin
(The Write Stuff)
Spy writer Ted Allbeury and historian Robin Mackness also feature in this weekly review of books and publishing.
Presenter Henry Kelly introduces the programme from Birmingham with a rundown of this week's highlights. Reporter Jill Cochrane then interviews espionage author Ted Allbeury from the garden shed which doubles as his study and work area. He discusses his changing approach to writing by starting with characters rather than situations and how he never plots out the books in advance.
Henry Kelly meets with author Robin Mackness about his Second World War book Massacre at Oradour. He was working for a bank when he was asked to investigate a quantity of gold in Switzerland which turned out to have been stolen from the Nazis in France - and which preceded the massacre of an entire town as the Nazis tried to get it back.
Henry then reports from Manhattan where he speaks to Belva Plain about her breakthrough novel, Evergreen. She speaks about the themes of losing touch with the traditions that older generations of immigrants brought to the US. Henry runs through the Top Ten US Fiction chart. Jill chats to Sally Beauman, who auctioned her half-finished book, Destiny, for a million dollar advance in in the US. She discusses the pressure of the advance and the explicit nature of the book as well as her background working for Mills and Boon.
Ned Sherrin is the week's celebrity reviewer and he chats to Henry about books he reads for pleasure, for research and what he calls enforced reading for reviews. Henry finishes the programme by running through the UK Top Ten Paperback Fiction chart.
The Write Stuff was a weekly round-up of the world of books, authors and publishing and was a contribution from Ulster Television to the ITV network's daytime schedules. Each week, presenter Henry Kelly and reporter Jill Cochrane interviewed prominent authors, sought out celebrities for the latest books they'd read and ran through the weekly book charts.
Take a trip back in time to the literary landscape of the 1980s, full of spy and romantic blockbusters, in this series made for Channel 4 and presented by Henry Kelly and Anne Robinson.
Think Top of the Pops for the book world. For two series, this Channel 4 look at the world of 1980s literature, made by Green Apple/UTV, gave viewers the chart countdown for both fiction and non-fiction interspersed with interviews with the top authors of the day. Hosted by Henry Kelly for the first series and Anne Robinson for the second, The Write Stuff visited authors both in the UK and the USA to gain insights into their crafts or even just for juicy details on stars being covered by biographers.
Lovers of books will find much to fascinate them here, with bestselling authors of yesteryear interviewed in their prime, from Jeffrey Archer to Clive Barker and from Ruby Wax to Jackie Collins. How many of the titles featured have lasted the course of popular and critical acclaim? Indulge yourself in this literary series to find out.
