Contributors to date (14):
Matthew Bailey [1]
Frank Collins [1]
Simon Coward [1]
Ian Greaves [3]
Cat McKiernan [1]
Tom May [3]
David Rolinson [35]
Nigel Sarrassa-Dyer [1]
Neil Sinyard [2]
Emma Sutton [2]
Oliver Wake [29]
John Wheatcroft [8]
John Williams [2]
‘Mr Wolf’ [1]
James Zborowski [1]
Books by our contributors
David Rolinson wrote a book about the Doctor Who docudrama An Adventure in Space and Time, which was be published by Obverse in April 2026. This book studies An Adventure in Space and Time as a docudrama, including its inevitable alterations and omissions, its disclaimer about rewriting history, and how its re-enacted Doctor Who scenes parallel the Doctor with Hartnell’s situation. To chart the docudrama’s insights and references, this book ranges across Doctor Who, including how history teachers travel in time, when a police box is just a police box, how Doctor Who interacts with paratexts such as BBC idents, and the many returns of Hartnell’s Doctor. The book covers paratextuality, promotional screen cultures, school teaching of history, historiography/counterfactuals, and docudrama studies methods and debates, including the role of disclaimers. The book celebrates the Hartnell Doctor and the series’ ambitious early years. A list of David’s work can be found here.
Oliver Wake wrote a book about the Doctor Who serial The Daleks, which was published by Obverse in April 2026. This book studies the series’ second-ever serial, which “establishes the principle that the Doctor fights alien monsters”. It studies the “influences” of the serial, “from HG Wells’ The Time Machine through Nazi eugenics to the movies of the atomic era” and “how Terry Nation’s script was translated through sound and visual design into perhaps the most important Doctor Who story of all”.
Ian Greaves wrote Penda’s Fen: Scene by Scene, which was published by Ten Acre Books in 2025. The book provides an exhaustive account of the production of this Play for Today and an insightful study of its themes and influences. The book examines “how this masterpiece came to be, drawing upon every surviving draft of the script, a wealth of production papers, revealing correspondence, evocative on-location photography from the summer of 1973, and extensive interviews with cast and crew”. The book has been acclaimed by reviewers and by the writer of Penda’s Fen, David Rudkin, who called it “Astonishing. I enjoyed a deeper working involvement in the making of the film than most authors are granted — but even so, there was so much going on that I didn’t know. Thank you for teaching me.”
Ian Greaves, David Rolinson and John Williams edited a collection of Dennis Potter’s non-fiction writing, Dennis Potter, The Art of Invective: Selected Non-Fiction 1953-1994, which was published by Oberon Books in 2015. This book “includes his merciless television columns, penetrating literary criticism and angry writings on class and politics, as well as his sketches for Sixties satire shows including That Was the Week That Was. From Frost-Nixon to Coronation Street, David Hare to Doctor Who, Orwell to Emu, this collection shows Potter’s distinctive voice at its entertaining, thought-provoking and uncompromising best.” The editors provide introductions to three sections covering periods of his work and provide explanatory endnotes. Reviewing The Art of Invective for Literary Review, Jonathan Meades wrote: “Every page of this book is constellated with sentences and phrases of, variously, humour, cleverness, warmth, indignation and savagery. It is one of the very finest collections of ‘occasional’ (but far from ephemeral) writing I have read: what counts is not the medium, not the genre, but the mind. The scholarship of the editors is impeccable.”
Ian Greaves edited a collection of writing by Jonathan Miller, One Thing and Another: Selected Writings 1954-2016, which was published by Oberon Books in 2017. In collaboration with Justin Lewis, Ian Greaves wrote Prime Minister, You Wanted To See Me? A History of Week Ending, which was published by Kaleidoscope. Ian co-curated an NF Simpson tribute at the Royal Court in May 2012 and edited collections of Simpson’s work. Ian also contributed a chapter to the book No Known Cure: The Comedy of Chris Morris (BFI/Palgrave, 2013), contributed research to numerous books by other authors, and has researched documentaries for BBC Radio 4.
Neil Sinyard is the author of 25 books on film, including studies of directors such as William Wyler, Fred Zinnemann, Billy Wilder, Alfred Hitchcock and Steven Spielberg. His most recent books include Fred Zinnemann: Films of Character and Conscience and Graham Greene: A Literary Life, which were published in 2003 by McFarland and Palgrave Macmillan respectively, A Wonderful Heart: The Films of William Wyler, which was published by McFarland in 2013, and George Stevens: The Films of a Hollywood Giant, which was published by McFarland in 2019. He has contributed to many DVD and blu-ray releases of classic films for companies such as Criterion, Hammer and Indicator. Some of Neil Sinyard’s writing on film and other topics can be found on this website, a sister site of ours.
James Zborowski wrote Classical Hollywood Cinema: Point of View and Communication, which was published by Manchester University Press in 2015. ‘ “Disappointingly thin and flaccid”: Gender, Authorship and Authenticity in Shane Meadows’ Once Upon a Time in the Midlands (2002) (Emma Sutton, co-authored with Martin Fradley) , Scope: An Online Journal of Film Studies, issue 26, February 2014.
In 2016, Stairwell Books published John Wheatcroft’s novel Here in the Cull Valley, a genre-defying “why-dunnit” novel which proves that a unique literary format can sit side-by-side with a gripping story. The novel unfolds largely through newspaper stories but it plays by the rules of character and narrative. It’s a story told, according to one newspaper reviewer, “with powerful humour, invention, perception and poignancy”. Andrew Martin, author of the Jim Stringer murder mysteries, described Here in the Cull Valley as “a completely plausible psychological mystery. It is doom-laden, but laced with humour as elegantly dry as a good Chablis”. (It was previously available as an ebook.) Here in the Cull Valley is available from Stairwell Books here. 
In 2019, Stairwell Books published Rocket Boy, John Wheatcroft’s second novel. It’s a tragi-comic love story, with an ultimately upbeat ending, about a man rueing missed romantic opportunities. Rocket Boy is available here.
In 2010, Frank Collins published The Pandorica Opens (Classic TV Press), an accessible yet scholarly analysis of the 2010 season of Doctor Who which has received excellent reviews. It is also now available for the Kindle.
More information here from the Classic TV Press site. Frank Collins has also written two book-length studies of Doctor Who stories ‘Warriors’ Gate’ and ‘Kinda’, which were published by Obverse in 2019 and 2022 respectively and are available here and here.
TV-related pieces by our contributors for other websites
Conference review: Straight Outta Uttoxeter: Studying Shane Meadows, University of East Anglia conference (Emma Sutton)
List does not include pieces subsequently revised for this website. See also our content lists for the many pieces that several of our contributors have written for the Screenonline website