Draft:Neville Teller

Neville Teller
Neville Teller, 2024
Born	(1931-06-10) 10 June 1931 London, England
Occupation	radio dramatist and journalist
Education	Dame Alice Owen's School; St Edmund Hall, Oxford
Period	1956–present
Notable works	Radio dramatisations of P.D. James crime novels
Notable awards	Member of the Order of the British Empire
Website
www.nevilleteller.co.uk

Neville Teller (born June 10, 1931) is a veteran BBC radio writer, dramatist and abridger. His BBC radio output encompasses more than 50 radio dramas, some 250 radio abridgements, a quiz show for Radio 2 which ran for about seven years (The ABC Quiz.), and a succession of music features for BBC Radios 2 and 3. He has also abridged well over 300 audiobooks for a variety of book publishers. He is Guest Playwright for Shoestring Radio Theatre and has produced scores of radio dramatisations for them.

In July 2012 he began writing regularly for the Jerusalem Post and its various publications.

Early Life

Neville Teller was born in London. Just after the start of the Second World War, at the age of 8, he was sent to a preparatory boarding school in Hove, Aryeh House. The school was evacuated to Wales in September 1940, and he spent most of the war years there, returning to London in June 1944.  In the September he entered Owen’s School, an ancient London grammar school. From there he won an open scholarship to St Edmund Hall, Oxford, to read Modern History.

First, however, he undertook his National Service. He was in the Army from 1950 until the autumn of 1952, ending in the Royal Army Educational Corps. He went up to Oxford in the autumn of 1952. While there he was on the committee of the Oxford University Dramatic Society (the OUDS), and was president of the Experimental Theatre Club. He concentrated on radio work, using the local commercial recording studios. Obtaining BBC radio scripts, he directed a number of radio productions using undergraduate actors, often inviting the original BBC producer and some of the cast to Oxford to hear the playback before an undergraduate audience.

Coming down in 1955, he tried unsuccessfully to enter the BBC as a drama producer. However, freelance work as an abridger for the Woman’s Hour serial was forthcoming, so in the autumn of 1956 he joined British Cellophane Ltd as a copywriter. Subsequently, while continuing to write for the BBC, he pursued a dual career. He moved from British Cellophane to other firms, becoming successively a brand manager, a sales manager and eventually marketing manager for Times Newspapers. In 1970 he entered the administrative branch of the Civil Service, in the then Department of Health and Social Security. He left on his 60th birthday, on which day he joined Macmillan Cancer Relief. On 10 June 2001 he retired from Macmillan, and became a full-time radio and audio dramatist and abridger, while also writing on Middle East affairs.

Career

His first credit in Radio Times was in February 1956 for his abridgement of “The Wheel Spins” broadcast as the Woman’s Hour serial. His first radio dramatisation was of the novel “Party Going” which was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 29 March 1981. Since 1980 he has written about the  Middle East, and particularly the Israel-Palestinian dispute, under his own name and occasionally the pseudonym Edmund Owen.

He served twice as Chair of the Broadcasting Committee of the Society of Authors, and was Chair of the Contributors’ Committee of the Audiobook Publishing Association. He was awarded the MBE in 2006 “for services to broadcasting and to drama”.

In 2019 he published ten of his radio dramatisations under the title “Audio Drama: 10 Plays for Radio and Podcast”.  He followed this up in 2021 with a second collection, “More Audio Drama: 10 More Plays for Radio and Podcast”. This volume was republished in 2023 as “Audio Drama 2: 10 More Plays for Radio and Podcast”.

Under the pen-name Edmund Owen, he ran a column about the Israeli scene in the 1980s for the Manchester-based Jewish Telegraph (“Edmund Owen’s Israel”), as well as a series of articles for The Spectator, The Jewish Chronicle  and The Jewish Herald. In about 2010 he began contributing regularly on this subject to the online journal Eurasia Review, and a few years later became its Middle East correspondent

To mark Israel’s 60th anniversary, in May 2008 he published “One Man’s Israel”, a miscellany of 36 pieces with Israel as their theme, including short stories and a radio drama.  He followed this in 2011 with "One Year in the History of Israel and Palestine" based on his blog "A Mid-East Journal", and in 2014 with "The Search for Detente: Israel and Palestine 2012-2014" in which he traced the US-led efforts to effect peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

He followed this with “The Chaos in the Middle East”, published in 2016, and in 2020 with “Trump and the Holy Land:  2016-2020”, in which he traced US President Donald Trump’s efforts to achieve a peace deal.

He currently writes a weekly political article for the Jerusalem Post, contributes regularly to the Jerusalem Report, and produces occasional articles and book reviews for the Jerusalem Post Weekend Magazine. He publishes a full list of his radio dramatisations, abridgments and publications on his website.

Personal Life

He married Sheila Brown (1932–2016) in 1958.  They had three sons.  In 2011 they retired to Israel.

Publications

• "Bluff Your Way In Marketing" (Wolfe Publishing Ltd, 1966, reprinted 1970, 1973)
• "Whodunit? Ten tales of crime and detection" (Edward Arnold, 1970, reprinted 1971)
• "Hospice: The Living Idea" ed. Cicely Saunders, Dorothy Summers and Neville Teller (Edward Arnold, 1981)
• "British Architectural Design Awards 1983" ed. Neville Teller (Templegate Publishing 1984)
• "British Construction Profile" ed. Neville Teller (McMillan Martin Ltd, 1984)
• "British Architectural Design Awards 1984" ed. Neville Teller (McMillan Martin Ltd. 1985) [also 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988 - the last three in collaboration with Sheila Teller]
• “Children's Literature on Radio, Podcast and Audio" by Neville Teller in "The Children's Writers' and Artists' Yearbook" 2005 to 2024 (A & C Black, 2004-2023)
• "One Man's Israel" (Trafford Publishing, May 2008)
• "One Year in the History of Israel and Palestine" (Troubador Publishing Ltd,  2011)
• “5-Minute Bedtime Stories” (Troubador Publishing Ltd, 2013)
• "The Search for Detente: Israel and Palestine 2012-2014" (Troubador Publishing 2014)
• “The Chaos in the Middle East: 2014-2016” (Troubador Publishing, 2016)
• “Audio Drama: 10 Plays for Radio and Podcast” (Troubador, 2019).  
• “Trump and the Holy Land: 2016-2020” “ (Troubador Publishing, 2020)
• “More Audio Drama: 10 More Plays for Radio and Podcast”. (Troubador, 2021)
• “Audio Drama 2: 10 More Plays for Radio and Podcast” (Troubador,, 2023)