Peter Alan Yeldham (born 25 April 1927) is an Australian screenwriter for motion pictures and television, playwright and novelist.
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Peter Yeldham was born in Gladstone, near Smithtown, New South Wales in 1927. Leaving Knox Grammar School at 16, Yeldham became a jackaroo in Queensland but did not like it. He enlisted in the Australian Army and was posted to Japan.[1] Returning to Sydney, he attempted to join the Sydney Morning Herald as a cadet journalist but was told they only accepted those with university degrees. He worked for Radio 2GB in Sydney instead, starting as a messenger boy and was later eventually allowed to write radio scripts for such programmes as Famous Trials, Medical Files and When a Girl Marries.[2]Yeldham's young age may have worked for him as he was instructed that the average mental age of the Australian radio audience was thirteen and to write accordingly.[3]
In 1956, the year television arrived in Australia, he moved to England with his family where he was given a reference to producer Harry Alan Towers. Thus began twenty years of writing for television and motion pictures in the United Kingdom. With independent television taking off in the British Isles, Yeldham was employed writing for such shows as Armchair Theatre, Shadow Squad, Dial 999 and other British TV series.
Producer Jon Pennington admired Yeldham's television work and had engaged him for the screenplays of The Comedy Man and The Liquidator. Yeldham continuing writing screenplays for Harry Alan Towers.
After disagreements with Mirisch Films Oakmont Productions where he was engaged but not hired to write a war film to be made in England, Yeldham began writing plays.[4]
Feeling homesick, Yeldham returned to Australia in 1972 where he was employed writing Australian television episodes and miniseries. He has written more than a dozen miniseries, including 1984's All the Rivers Run and 1987's Captain James Cook. Yeldham detested the title of the latter, preferring The Wind and the Stars but the ABC and overseas investors insisted on the Cook title. The costly historical drama genre fell out of favour with the networks in the 1990s, so Yeldham relishes the rare chance to revisit it.[5]
From the 1990s he turned to novel writing.
Crime Fiction