Sheila Hodgson (1921–2001)

Sheila Hodgson was born in Beckenham, Kent, England, where she spent most of her life. Her father Stuart Hodgson was an editor of The Daily News, the national newspaper founded by Charles Dickens. During World War II, Sheila toured the British Isles entertaining the troops with ENSA (Entertainments National Service Association). She later performed with a variety of small repertory theater companies. She wrote her first plays for the stage before joining the BBC as a scriptwriter at Television Centre. After six years, she moved to ATV, writing for the medical soap opera Emergency Ward 10. Sheila became a prolific and successful writer of various radio and television dramas from the 1950s to the 1990s. Towards the end of her career, she became fascinated with the supernatural, successfully adapting works by Algernon Blackwood and M.R. James for TV, including The Human Chord (1985) and The Boat Hook (1992).