User:Neville Teller
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Neville Teller, MBE (10 June 1931 – ) is a veteran BBC radio writer, dramatist and abridger. His first credit in Radio Times was in February 1956, for his abridgement of “The Wheel Spins” by Ethel Lina White, broadcast as the Woman’s Hour serial. His first radio dramatisation was of the novel “Party Going” by Henry Green, which was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 29 March 1981. He also writes on Middle East and Israeli topics under the pseudonym Edmund Owen.
Teller was born in London. Just after the start of the Second World War in 1939, at the age of 8, he was sent to a preparatory boarding school in Hove, Aryeh House School. 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 entered 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, the national cancer charity. On 10 June 2001 he retired from Macmillan, and became a full-time writer for radio and audio.
His BBC radio career encompasses more than 50 radio dramas, some 200 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 abridged well over 250 audiobooks. Under the pen-name Edmund Owen, he ran a column in the 1980s for the Manchester-based Jewish Telegraph about the Israeli scene (“Edmund Owen’s Israel”), as well as a series of articles for The Spectator, The Jewish Chronicle and The Jewish Herald.
He served as 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”.
References:
“Agatha Abridged” by Elaine Wiltshire (Publishing News, 20 July 2001)
“The Incredible Shrinking Book” by Duncan Minshull (The Guardian, 13 August 2001) “The Radio Companion” by Paul Donovan (HarperCollins) – “The ABC Quiz” “The Writers’ Directory” (St James Press) www.societyofauthors.org www.theapa.net web.ukonline.co.uk/suttonelms/RADIO1.HTML
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 Ltd, 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]
"Edmund Owen's Israel" (column in "The Jewish Telegraph" from September 1987 to September 1988)
"Holy Rows and Warplanes" by Edmund Owen (The Spectator, 12 Sep 1987)
"What is Israel up to in the Gulf?" by Edmund Owen (The Jewish Herald, 10 Dec 1987)
"Israel's Day of Reckoning is at Hand" by Edmund Owen (The Jewish Herald, 4 Aug 1988)
"Land of the Rising Hate" by Neville Teller (The Jewish Chronicle, 12 Aug 1988)
"Old City, New Face" by Neville Teller (The Jewish Chronicle, 18 May 1990)
"The Case of Otto Schwarzkopf" by Shmuel Huppert, English version by Neville Teller ("The Jewish Chronicle, 11 Jan 1991; The Independent, 14 Sep 1993)
"Children's Literature on Radio and Audio" by Neville Teller in "The Children's Writers' and Artists' Yearbook" 2005, 2006, 2007 (A & C Black, 2004, 2005, 2006)
