A Life Rewound - Peter Morley

Peter Morley's memoirs span a remarkable career, in which he has garnered twelve international programme awards and an OBE for services to television, and offer a unique insight into the changing face of television. With over 200 credits to his name, he started, aged sixteen, as a rewind-boy in the projection box of London's Dominion Theatre - having left Hitler's Germany in 1933. Wartime service in a tank, which took him from France to Belgium, Holland, and finally Berlin, was followed by a steady rise from film editing to writing and directing documentary films. In 1955, as ITV was about to go on the air, Morley took the plunge and joined Associated-Rediffusion as a freelance television director/producer, responsible for a wide-ranging mix of programmes. By 1959, with fifty programmes to his name, he embarked on ITV's first opera, a live studio production of The Turn of the Screw. Sir Kenneth Clark, Chairman of the Arts Council, wrote: 'As a work of art I think it is the best thing the medium has ever produced.' Morley's sixty-minute documentaries for ITV soon became a regular feature. They included Tyranny - The Years of Adolf Hitler, which contained interviews with Hitler's sister, his adjutant, pilot and chauffeur. In 1960 he produced This Week, ITV's long running weekly current affairs programme, winning his first BAFTA. The controversial documentary Black Marries White - The Last Barrier marked a new impressionistic style of programme-making, the documentary LSO - The Music Men similarly dispensed with narration, and his live five-hour broadcast of The State Funeral of Sir Winston Churchill was awarded the Cannes Grand Prix. Peter Morley's fascination for historical subjects yielded a host of different programmes - including his twelve-part The Life and Times of Lord Mountbatten, for the BBC the thirteen-part The Mighty Continent - A History of Europe in the 20th Century, and for Yorkshire Television the four-part Women of Courage, featuring remarkable women who shared an instinctive compulsion to fight the Nazis. Peter Morley's memorable Kitty - Return to Auschwitz is described by many as 'a television classic', and received five international awards. A founding trustee of BAFTA, Peter Morley is renowned as a film-maker par excellence - and a key figure in the history of television. Bank House Books is proud to publish his memoirs.