Richard Carpenter (screenwriter)
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Richard "Kip" Carpenter (born 1933) is an English television screenwriter and author who has created a number of popular British television series, the most famous of which internationally is probably Robin of Sherwood.
Born and brought up in Norfolk, he attended the Old Vic Theatre School before starting an acting career by working in rep. In 1969, he created Catweazle, the children's series about an unfortunate wizard from the 11th century who is accidentally transported to the present-day. This changed the course of his career substantially. During the 1970s he went on to write the series The Ghosts of Motley Hall, Dick Turpin, parts of the series Enid Blyton's Famous Five and some episodes of Black Beauty for ITV companies; and Cloudburst, The Boy from Space and The King's Dragon as part of BBC's Look and Read programme for schools, some episodes of which he also presented.
In the eighties came the historical adventures Smuggler and its later antipodean-based follow-up Adventurer and between them, the lavish HTV production Robin of Sherwood, which ran for three series. Carpenter then worked on a number of series for children and families in the nineties (The Winjin Pom, Stanley's Dragon and Out of Sight), some of which (The Borrowers, The Return of the Borrowers, and The Scarlet Pimpernel) were based on classic novels.
Carpenter wrote novelisations of many of the early series he created: Catweazle, Cloudburst, The Ghosts of Motley Hall, Smuggler, Robin of Sherwood and two on Dick Turpin.
