| Individual or organisational biography | Betty Willingale was born in Rotherhithe, London, in 1927. Her father was a Thames lighterman.
Betty joined the BBC as a teenager in 1944, working at in the Library at Bush House (International division.). She became part of the early TV drama team
She headed the BBC script unit for many years, first in the Script Library and then as Script Editor on many major productions in the 1960s and 1970s, before producing her own shows. Her first script editor role was for 'Compact' in 1962, and she went on to work on a number of well known TV adaptations including 'I,Claudius' in 1976, and 'The 'Barchester Chronicles' in 1982. She gained her production debut in 1983 with the BBC adaptation of Jane Austen's 'Mansfield Park'. She later worked as producer on an adaption of the Olivia Manning trilogy, 'Fortunes of War'', which starred Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson. It was broadcast in 1987.
When she retired from the BBC in 1988, she worked at Carnival Films, for 10 years, including as a consultant on Jeeves and Wooster, 1990 and as a script editor on Agatha Christie's Poirot, both for Granada, for ITV. She then went on to create and produce Midsomer Murders for ITV. She was still working until four years before her death at the age of 93.
The collection comprises material from Betty Willingale's home by the executors of her will, Christabel and Brian Eastman. The executors made some selections of material, focussing predominantly on that which related to her professional life as a Script Editor and Producer. The archive emerged organically over the course of Willingale’s career, including files of readers reports compiled during her work for the BBC Script Unit, and selected correspondence and ephemera about different productions on which she worked. She also became friends with a number of a wide range of writers, actors, producers and others in the television industry, which is reflected in her correspondence.
The archive also contains her copies of books relating to TV adaptations that she worked on. |
| Custodial History | Papers of Betty Willingale, donated by the executors of her estate, Brian and Christabel Eastman. |