Jan Needle
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Jan Needle (Full name James Albert Needle) is an English author born in 1943. He was born and grew up in Portsmouth on the South coast of England, coming from a family with strong naval and military connections. He has written over thirty novels, as well as books and plays for adults and children, books of critisicm, cartoons and radio and television serials and series.
After studying to becoming a journalist and despite poor A-level results in English, he moved to the North-West of England at age 20 to work for the Daily Herald newspaper. At 25 he took a Drama degree course at Manchester University, quitting full time journalism after working for various papers. His first novel, Albeson and the Germans, was published in 1977. [1]
In the early '90s, he wrote four adult novels under the pseudenym 'Frank Kippax': The Scar, The Butcher's Bill, Other People's Blood and Fear of Night and Darkness.[2]
His historical nautical series, the William Bentley novels, are known for showing the British Navy in a less favourable light than most fictional books in the genre tend to, and for removing some of the romantic gloss that is often attached to the genre.
He currently lives in Uppermill, Oldham and West Didsbury, Manchester in the Northwest of England, and has five children.
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[edit] Controversy
Some of his works have caused slight controversy in the past: Don't Tell The Frogs, a comedy focusing on the nuclear industry, was pulled after pressure; the Government attempted to block the running of the television serial A Game of Soldiers, due to its subject of the Falklands War; Needle was banned from acting as the keynote speaker at a conference on realism in children's books by teachers due to his book My Mate Shofiq. [3]
He has also had other problems with his works, such as his novel Wild Wood, which re-tells the story of The Wind in the Willows from the view of the working class characters in the wood, for whom money is short and employment is hard to find. The carefree actions of the upper-class Toad and friends heavily affect the poor characters of the wood, such as Toad's chauffeur, who loses his job. The book was generally seen as a comment on the Margaret Thatcher-led Tory Government and the changes in British society at the time, and was blocked from publication for several years.[4]
[edit] Television
Needle has written serials for television, such as Truckers, A Game of Soldiers, Behind the Bike Sheds and Soft Soap, and has also written episodes for various well-known series, including Duckula, Thomas the Tank Engine, Sooty and Sweep, Brookside and The Bill.[5]
[edit] Re-Edits
Recently, Needle has re-written classic novels, to make them more accessible for children. In 2004, his cut down version of Bram Stoker's Dracula was published, followed in the next few years by a translated and adapted version of The Hunchback of Notre-Dame and a re-working of Moby-Dick.[6]
