He was creator of such series as
Secret Army,
1990,
Plane Makers and its sequel
The Power Game,
Hine,
Brett,
Man From Haven and
The Inheritors. He also wrote the screenplay for the 1969 film
Battle of Britain. Starting off as a journalist, he got his big break as a TV writer on
Lew Grade's
ATV service writing dramas about journalism, such as
Deadline Midnight and
Front Page Story. Over its two series it portrayed "a Britain in which the rights of the individual had been replaced by the concept of the common good – or, as I put it more brutally, a consensus tyranny." When talking about his writing style he said "I am opposed to soft-centred characters, which is why I don't create a lot of Robin Hoods. The world's full of hard cases, real villains. And they need to be confronted with other characters just as hard." His last series for television was
Airline in 1982 (starring
Roy Marsden). He died in of
renal failure in
Buckinghamshire in 2002. ==Writing credits==