I really liked this biography of Sydney Newman. I knew of Newman through Doctor Who, but this book shows his other accomplishments, especially during his time as Head of BBC Drama. It was well written, and enjoyable and informative. Well worth a read, especially for Doctor Who fans.

Born Shimshon Nudelman in the poor section of Toronto, media historians might know Sydney Newman as a former promising artist, or once a vital cog at the National Film Board of Canada or at ABC Television in Britain. But almost any fan of DOCTOR WHO's long history can tell you that Newman was the bloke who came up with the idea of an old man traveling in a time machine who can visit points in Earth history, and appointed a young woman named Verity Lambert to produce the show (a rarity in that day, as well as having a young man of Arab ancestry to direct the first story). He was determined not to have "bug-eyed monsters" on his new show, which he insisted should be about history, and was nonplussed when the second story in the series, about the pepperpot Daleks, made the series a hit.

The first half of the volume is a memoir by Newman of his life through 1987; it's frank and some of the language would be considered culturally insensitive today (although Newman uses it to refer to himself). He rises from struggling young artist to flirting with socialism to employment with the National Film Board of Canada to working in Britain where THE AVENGERS turned from a police procedural to the hip television series we remember today, and finally to the BBC as head of drama. Newman's colorful life and stubborn character is well-told in an unflinching narrative (although, as in all memoirs, he forgets some of the details, which are remedied with footnotes). At home he was married to the love of his life, Betty, until her death from polychondritis and they—well, mostly she, as was the tradition back then—raised three daughters.

Burk takes over after Newman's memoir leaves off, chronicling the final thirty years of his life as his career waned. In the 1980s he even lost touch with the series he was most associated with, DOCTOR WHO stating it should quit doing all those trite science fiction plots and go back to historical and scientific stories. (However, in a nod to current events, he also thought it would be appropriate if the Doctor regenerated into a woman!) As a treat—although it is a rather sad postscript—there is an afterword by Newman's daughter Deirdre, offering another short perspective on her father and also on her mother's death and how it affected him.

In a modern age where "get up and go" ambition has been replaced with the need for multiple college degrees, Newman's story of climbing the executive ladder on grit and blarney may be an eye-opener. If you have no knowledge of Canadian and British broadcasting, you may find the narrative dry or without purpose. On the other hand, if you're a fan of THE AVENGERS or DOCTOR WHO (especially if you saw the film AN ADVENTURE IN SPACE AND TIME and wondered about that bombastic man ordering Jessica Raine's Verity Lambert about), you probably will enjoy Newman's story.

If, to paraphrase JFK, success has a hundred fathers and failure is an orphan, it should be no surprise to discover that ‘Doctor Who’ is normally credited with three creators: Sydney Newman, the then Head of BBC Drama; C. E. Webber, a BBC staff writer; and Donald Wilson, who as BBC Head of Serials helped Webber co-write the first format document for the programme.

If forced to say which of this trio was first among equals that position would have to be accorded to Newman, as without his vision and drive the project would never have come to fruition. ‘Doctor Who’ was, however, merely one highlight in Newman’s extraordinarily influential career in both Canadian and British broadcasting and film.

The scope of Newman’s achievement is reinforced by reading his detailed memoirs which have been published for the first time as ‘Head of Drama. The Memoir of Sydney Newman’ with contributions by (author of multiple ‘Doctor Who’ books) Graeme Burk.

In fact this really comprises two books for the price of one (together with a Foreword by Ted Kotcheff and an Afterword by Newman’s eldest daughter Deirdre). In the first ‘book’, over the course of twenty chapters, Newman details his life from his birth in 1917, into a poor Jewish family in Toronto, to his moving back to Canada from Britain in 1970. In the second ‘book’, rather awkwardly entitled ‘From the Saturday Serial, to the Wednesday Play, to the October Crisis, and Beyond’, Burk spends thirteen chapters covering much of the material Newman either omitted or skipped over lightly, beginning with Newman joining the BBC but taking the story up to Newman’s return to Britain as an independent producer in the 1980s.

Although he deprecatingly refers to his memoirs as “a mass of verbiage” and “what appears to be a rubbishly written book”, in fact Newman writes in an engaging and candid manner not only about himself but also about many of the famous people whose paths he crossed in the course of his professional career, including John Grierson, Norman McLaren, Eleanor Roosevelt, Basil Rathbone, Arthur Hailey, Ted Willis, Alun Owen and Harold Pinter.

Newman’s background in documentary film-making attracted him to the theatrical trend towards greater realism and led to his playing a major role in revolutionizing television drama, first at ABC with ‘Armchair Theatre’ and then at the BBC with the ‘Wednesday Play’, highlights of which included Ken Loach’s ‘Up the Junction’ (1965) and ‘Cathy Come Home’ (1966). Nor should one overlook Newman’s gift for devising popular drama series – not only evidenced by ‘Doctor Who’ but also by ‘The Avengers’ during his time at ABC (although ‘Adam Adamant Lives!’ was a rare flop). It was thus Newman who presided over what is commonly regarded as British television drama’s ‘golden age’ and as such his importance for 1960s British TV is rivalled only by that of Sir Hugh Carleton Greene as the BBC’s Director General.

Fans of ‘Doctor Who’ will definitely want to read this book but it should also be of considerable interest to all those who watched TV in the 1960s or have discovered its delights since.