Christopher Riley (born 1967) is a British writer, broadcaster and film maker specialising in the history of science. He has a PhD from Imperial College, University of London where he pioneered the use of digital elevation models in the study of mountain range geomorphology and evolution. He makes frequent appearances on British television and radio, broadcasting mainly on space flight,

astronomy Astronomy () is a natural science that studies celestial objects and phenomena. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and evolution. Objects of interest include planets, moons, stars, nebulae, g ...

and

planetary science Planetary science (or more rarely, planetology) is the scientific study of planets (including Earth), celestial bodies (such as moons, asteroids, comets) and planetary systems (in particular those of the Solar System) and the processes of their ...

and was Visiting Professor of science and media at the

University of Lincoln , mottoeng = Freedom through wisdom , established = 1861 – Hull School of Art1905 – Endsleigh College1976 – Hull College1992 – University of Humberside1996 – University of Lincolnshire and Humberside2001 � ...

between 2011 and 2021.

Education

Riley went to school in

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...

, where he grew up. He studied

geology Geology () is a branch of natural science concerned with Earth and other Astronomical object, astronomical objects, the features or rock (geology), rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which they change over time. Modern geology ...

at the

University of Leicester , mottoeng = So that they may have life , established = , type = public research university , endowment = £20.0 million , budget = £326 million , chancellor = David Willetts , vice_chancellor = Nishan Canagarajah , head_lab ...

for his first degree and completed his PhD at Imperial College, University of London in the mid 1990s.

Career

Riley is a veteran of two NASA astrobiology missions (Leonid MAC) from 1998 and 1999 – reporting on their progress for

BBC News BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broadc ...

. He co-presented the BBC's live coverage of the

1999 File:1999 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The funeral procession of King Hussein of Jordan in Amman; the 1999 İzmit earthquake kills over 17,000 people in Turkey; the Columbine High School massacre, one of the first major school shoot ...

2001 The September 11 attacks against the United States by Al-Qaeda, which killed 2,977 people and instigated the global war on terror, were a defining event of 2001. The United States led a multi-national coalition in an invasion of Afghanist ...

and

2015 File:2015 Events Collage new.png, From top left, clockwise: Civil service in remembrance of November 2015 Paris attacks; Germanwings Flight 9525 was purposely crashed into the French Alps; the rubble of residences in Kathmandu following the April ...

solar eclipses, and has fronted their astronomy magazine show ''Final Frontier'', their cosmology series ''Journeys in Time and Space'', and their live ''All Night Star Party'' – a co-production with the

Open University The Open University (OU) is a British Public university, public research university and the largest university in the United Kingdom by List of universities in the United Kingdom by enrolment, number of students. The majority of the OU's underg ...

. In 2006 he wrote and presented

BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history from the BBC's ...

's cosmology series ''The Cosmic Hunters''. Other documentaries he's written and presented for

include ''Save the Moon'' (2014) and ''For All Mankind'' (2012). Behind the camera he has written and directed more than 50 films for the BBC's classic science magazine show ''

Tomorrow's World ''Tomorrow's World'' is a former British television series about contemporary developments in science and technology. First transmitted on 7 July 1965 on BBC1, it ran for 38 years until it was cancelled at the beginning of 2003. The ''Tomorro ...

'' and was a producer and director on series six of ''

Rough Science Parameters ''Rough Science'' is a British documentary reality television series made by the BBC in collaboration with the Open University. Six series were made between 2000 and 2005. It was broadcast in prime time on BBC Two and is considered so ...

''. In 2004 he produced the BBC's two-part drama documentary '' Space Odyssey: Voyage to the Planets''. He was the science consultant on the BBC's remakes of their science fiction cult classics ''

A for Andromeda ''A for Andromeda'' is a British television science fiction drama serial first made and broadcast by the BBC in seven parts in 1961. Written by cosmologist Fred Hoyle, in conjunction with author and television producer John Elliot, it concern ...

'' (2006) and '' The Quatermass Experiment'' (2005). He directed and produced on the feature documentary film '' In the Shadow of the Moon'', which premiered at the

2007 Sundance Film Festival The 2007 Sundance Film Festival ran from January 18 until January 28, 2007, in Park City, Utah with screenings in Salt Lake City, Utah and Ogden, Utah. It was the 23-rd iteration of the Sundance Film Festival. The opening night film was '' Chic ...

, where it won the World Cinema Audience Documentary Award. The film was released in the US and Europe during the autumn of 2007. Riley directed on the spinoff six-part series '' Moon Machines'' for the Discovery Channel in 2008, which celebrated the 400,000 engineers who'd made the Moonshots possible. The series aired in the US and the UK in June that year. During the making of ''In the Shadow of the Moon'', Riley rediscovered the only surviving 35mm print of the complete version of NASA's original Apollo 11 documentary film '' Moonwalk One'' which had been stored under the film's director

Theo Kamecke Theo Kamecke (October 18, 1937 - May 23, 2017) was a sculptor, who previously worked as a film director during the 1960s and 1970s. Kamecke's best known film is '' Moonwalk One'' - a NASA commissioned documentary feature film to cover their Apoll ...

's desk since it was made. With NASA's blessing, the pair worked to restore and remaster the feature film and re-released it in time for the 40th anniversary of the flight of

Apollo 11 Apollo 11 (July 16–24, 1969) was the American spaceflight that first landed humans on the Moon. Commander Neil Armstrong and lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin landed the Apollo Lunar Module ''Eagle'' on July 20, 1969, at 20:17 UTC, ...

in July 2009. At the

Cheltenham Science Festival Cheltenham Science Festival is one of the UK's leading science festivals, and is part of Cheltenham Festivals: also responsible for the Jazz, Music and Literature Festivals that run every year. The 2018 Cheltenham Science Festival (6–11 June) ...

in 2009 he presented research conducted with forensic linguist John Olsson on the recordings of Neil Armstrong's first words spoken on the surface of the Moon in July 1969. Their study confirmed that the "a" was missing – contradicting previous conclusions presented by Peter Shann Ford in 2006. Olsson and Riley went on to show that the words were spoken spontaneously and were not rehearsed or composed by some 'wordsmith' beforehand as many have speculated they might have been. In 2011 Riley teamed up with the

European Space Agency , owners = , headquarters = Paris, Île-de-France, France , coordinates = , spaceport = Guiana Space Centre , seal = File:ESA emblem seal.png , seal_size = 130px , image = Views in the Main Control Room (120 ...

and Italian astronaut

Paolo Nespoli Major Paolo Angelo Nespoli (born 6 April 1957) is an Italian astronaut and engineer of the European Space Agency (ESA). In 2007, he first traveled into space aboard the Space Shuttle ''Discovery'' as a mission specialist of STS-120. In December ...

to make the feature-length documentary ''

First Orbit ''First Orbit'' is a 2011 feature-length, experimental documentary film about Vostok 1, the first human space flight around the Earth. By matching the orbit of the International Space Station to that of Vostok 1 as closely as possible, in terms o ...

'' which re-created

Yuri Gagarin Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin; Gagarin's first name is sometimes transliterated as ''Yuriy'', ''Youri'', or ''Yury''. (9 March 1934 – 27 March 1968) was a Soviet pilot and cosmonaut who became the first human to journey into outer space. T ...

's pioneering spaceflight

Vostok 1 Vostok 1 (russian: link=no, Восток, ''East'' or ''Orient'' 1) was the first spaceflight of the Vostok programme and the first human orbital spaceflight in history. The Vostok 3KA space capsule was launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome on Apr ...

. The film was recorded by matching the orbit of the

International Space Station The International Space Station (ISS) is the largest Modular design, modular space station currently in low Earth orbit. It is a multinational collaborative project involving five participating space agencies: NASA (United States), Roscosmos ( ...

to the ground path of Vostok 1, and released for free to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the pioneering human space flight. He produced Kevin Fong's 2011 portrait of the Space Shuttle for

BBC Two BBC Two is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It covers a wide range of subject matter, with a remit "to broadcast programmes of depth and substance" in contrast to the more mainstream a ...

and Produced and Directed a 2012 film presented by Dallas Campbell which celebrated thirty-five years of

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeedin ...

Voyager Program The Voyager program is an American scientific program that employs two robotic interstellar probes, ''Voyager 1'' and ''Voyager 2''. They were launched in 1977 to take advantage of a favorable alignment of Jupiter and Saturn, to fly near t ...

for

BBC Four BBC Four is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by the BBC. It was launched on 2 March 2002

. The same year Riley collaborated with

Neil Armstrong Neil Alden Armstrong (August 5, 1930 – August 25, 2012) was an American astronaut and aeronautical engineer who became the first person to walk on the Moon in 1969. He was also a naval aviator, test pilot, and university professor. ...

's family to produce and direct the biopic ''First Man on the Moon'', which premiered on

at the end of 2012 and on PBS Nova in December 2014. The film included interviews with Armstrong's sister June, brother Dean, and childhood friend Kocho Solacoff. In 2013 Riley produced and directed a biopic of Nobel Prize–winning physicist

Richard Feynman Richard Phillips Feynman (; May 11, 1918 – February 15, 1988) was an American theoretical physicist, known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics, the physics of the superfl ...

for the BBC. ''The Fantastic Mr Feynman'' aired on

in May that year, in time for what would have been Feynman's 95th birthday. It was the first biographical film about Feynman which the BBC had commissioned since Christopher Sykes' groundbreaking documentaries in the early 1980s. The film includes interviews with his son Carl, his daughter Michelle and his sister, physicist

Joan Feynman Joan Feynman (March 31, 1927 – July 21, 2020) was an American astrophysicist. She made contributions to the study of solar wind particles and fields, sun-Earth relations, and magnetospheric physics. In particular, Feynman was known for develo ...

who Riley subsequently wrote a short biography about. In 2014 he produced and directed a documentary about American neuroscientist John Lilly's controversial 1960s attempts to build an interspecies communications bridge between humans and dolphins. The film included the only onscreen interview recorded with the female researcher at the centre of the work - Margaret Howe Lovatt, who had reportedly developed a close relationship with one of the animals. The resulting film, ''The Girl who talked to Dolphins'', premiered at the 2014 Sheffield International Documentary Festival and received widespread five star reviews; ''The Telegraph'' noting that "the anti-sensationalist approach of Riley's superb documentary was its trump card." The film was nominated for both a BAFTA and an RTS award the same year and for a Grierson award in 2015. In 2015 it was announced that Riley would direct a new film on the

Hubble Space Telescope The Hubble Space Telescope (often referred to as HST or Hubble) is a space telescope that was launched into low Earth orbit in 1990 and remains in operation. It was not the first space telescope, but it is one of the largest and most vers ...

for National Geographic Channels. The resulting documentary ''Hubble's Cosmic Journey'' included contributions from cosmologist Stephen Hawking, astrophysicist Ed Weiler and Charlie Pellerin, US Senator

Barbara Mikulski Barbara Ann Mikulski ( ; born July 20, 1936) is an American politician and social worker who served as a United States senator from Maryland from 1987 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, she also served in the United States House of Repr ...

and astronauts

Story Musgrave Franklin Story Musgrave (born August 19, 1935) is an American physician and a retired NASA astronaut. He is a public speaker and consultant to both Disney's Imagineering group and Applied Minds in California. In 1996, he became only the second a ...

Charlie Bolden Charles Frank Bolden Jr. (born August 19, 1946) is a former Administrator of NASA, a retired United States Marine Corps Major General, and a former astronaut who flew on four Space Shuttle missions. He graduated from the United States Naval A ...

and John Grunsfeld. It premiered at National Geographic's Washington headquarters on 14 April 2015 and received its network premiere in 171 countries the following week. The film is narrated by astrophysicist

Neil deGrasse Tyson Neil deGrasse Tyson ( or ; born October 5, 1958) is an American astrophysicist, author, and science communicator. Tyson studied at Harvard University, the University of Texas at Austin, and Columbia University. From 1991 to 1994, he was a p ...

, and was nominated for an Emmy in 2015. In October 2015 Riley's long-awaited feature documentary ''

The Fear of 13 ''The Fear of 13'' is a 2015 British documentary film by David Sington. It tells the story of Nick Yarris, who was convicted and sentenced to capital punishment for a 1981 kidnapping, rape and murder, and spent 22 years on death row in Pennsyl ...

'' received its world premiere at the

BFI London Film Festival The BFI London Film Festival is an annual film festival founded in 1957 and held in the United Kingdom, running for two weeks in October with co-operation from the British Film Institute. It screens more than 300 films, documentaries and shor ...

where it was nominated for Best Documentary. The film tells the life story of death row prisoner Nicholas Yarris, and took Riley over seven years to make, working without funding for the project for much of that time. The title refers to triskaidekaphobia, the fear of the number 13, just one of the many words learned by prisoner Nick Yarris while absorbing thousands of books during his 20-year stay on Death Row in a Pennsylvania prison. It was received well by the critics scoring 92% on the review-aggregate site

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wan ...

. The film received its network premiere on the BBC's '' Storyville'' series on 31 January 2016, and was picked up by Netflix across the rest of the world. Riley collaborated with astronaut

for a second time in 2016–2017 to work on National Geographic's series ''

One Strange Rock ''One Strange Rock'' is an American television documentary series, produced by Nutopia in conjunction with Darren Aronofsky, which premiered on National Geographic on March 26, 2018. On July 25, 2018, National Geographic renewed the series for ...

'', with Paolo filming on board the International Space Station for the final episode 'Home' during

Expedition 52 Expedition 52 (June - September 2017) was the 52nd expedition to the International Space Station. It officially began on June 2, 2017 10:47 UTC, with the undocking of Soyuz MS-03. Transfer of Command from Expedition 51 was done on June 1, 2017. ...

which featured astronaut Peggy Whitson's last NASA mission. Riley directed across the series and wrote and directed the episode 'Survival' featuring astronaut

Jerry Linenger Jerry Michael Linenger (born January 16, 1955) is a retired Captain in the United States Navy Medical Corps, and a former NASA astronaut who flew on the Space Shuttle and Space Station Mir. Background Born January 16, 1955, and raised in East ...

. The series is hosted by actor

Will Smith Willard Carroll Smith II (born September 25, 1968), also known by his stage name The Fresh Prince, is an American actor and rapper. He began his acting career starring as a fictionalized version of himself on the NBC sitcom '' The Fresh ...

Awards and honours

In 2005 Riley was given a

Sir Arthur Clarke Award The Sir Arthur Clarke Award is a British award given annually since 2005 in recognition of notable contributions to space exploration, particularly British achievements. Nominations for the awards are made by members of the public, with shortlis ...

for his work producing the BBC's ''Space Odyssey'' series. The same year he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society for his endeavours in communicating astronomy to the public. His films and TV series on the history of science have won a nomination from the Royal Television Society and the World Cinema Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival 2007. He received a second

in 2008 for '' In the Shadow of the Moon''. His 2012 documentary ''Voyager – to the final frontier'' was nominated for a British Science Writer's award, and his 2014 film ''The Girl who talked to Dolphins'', was nominated for BAFTA, RTS and Grierson awards. His 2015 film for National Geographic, ''Hubble's Comsic Journey'', was nominated for an Emmy. His 2019 book, ''Where once we stood'', a collaboration with artist Martin Impey, was nominated for a CILIP Kate Greenaway medal in 2020. Riley's 2021 film for National Geographic - ''Battle for the Black Swan'', won the Gold Medal for History and Society at the New York Festivals TV & Film Awards in 2022, and was nominated for a BAFTA the same year.

Film and television

He has directed, produced, science consulted or hosted on the following films and TV series (incomplete): *2021: ''One Cup, a Thousand Stories'', BBC Studios, Migu *2021: ''Battle for the Black Swan'', National Geographic, Disney+ *2020: ''Future Fantastic; China's Science Revolution'', CIPG, Discovery Channel *2019: ''Back to the Moon'', PBS ''NOVA'' *2019: ''Revolutions/Breakthrough'', BBC, PBS *2019: ''Rise of the Rockets'', PBS ''NOVA'' *2018: ''

Eric Whitacre Eric Edward Whitacre (born January2, 1970) is an American composer, conductor, and speaker best known for his choral music. In March2016, he was appointed as Los Angeles Master Chorale's first artist-in-residence at the Walt Disney Concert Hall ...

's Deep Field'', iTunes, YouTube *2018: ''

'', National Geographic Channel *2016: ''Survival in the Skies'', Smithsonian Channel *2015: ''

'', BBC Storyville, NetFlix *2015: ''End of the World Night'', TwoFour, Channel 4 *2015: ''Hubble's Cosmic Journey'', Bigger Bang, National Geographic Channel *2015: ''The Sky at Night'', Hubble Anniversary Special, BBC FOUR *2015: ''Stargazing Live'', Total Eclipse Special, BBC ONE *2014: ''The Girl who talked to Dolphins'', BBC Scotland, BBC FOUR *2013: ''Richard Hammond Builds a Planet'', BBC Scotland, BBC ONE *2013: ''The Fantastic Mr Feynman'', BBC Scotland, BBC TWO, Netflix *2012: ''Neil Armstrong. First Man on the Moon'', Darlow Smithson, BBC TWO, PBS, Netflix *2012: ''Voyager: to the final frontier'', BBC Scotland, BBC FOUR *2011: ''Dark Matters'', Wide Eyed Entertainment, Science Channel *2011: ''Space Shuttle – the final mission'', Ricochet Television, BBC TWO *2011: '' James May's Things You Need To Know'', The Universe, Impossible Pictures, BBC TWO *2011: ''

'', The Attic Room, YouTube, BBC Big Screens *2011: ''Destination Titan'', BBC TWO/FOUR *2011: '' Outcasts'', Kudos, BBC ONE *2010: ''Dust'', Stylus Films, The Attic Room, Shorts International *2009: ''One Small Step – The Australian Story'', Freehand, BBC Worldwide *2009: '' James May on the Moon'', BBC TWO/FOUR *2009: '' Moonwalk One'' – the director's cut, BHP Group, DVD, Discovery Channel (UK) *2009: ''Music for Astronauts and Cosmonauts'', BFI, DVD *2008: '' When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions'', Discovery Channel *2008: '' Moon Machines'', Discovery Science Channel *2007: '' In the Shadow of the Moon'', Film 4, THINK Film, Discovery Films *2006: ''

'' *2005: ''

'', Series 6, BBC TV *2005: '' The Quatermass Experiment'' *2004: '' Space Odyssey: Voyage to the Planets'', BBC ONE, Discovery Channel *2004: ''Space Odyssey: the robot pioneers'', BBC FOUR, Discovery Channel *2003: ''All Night Star Party'', BBC TWO *2002: ''Can't Get Enough'', BBC TWO *2002: ''

'', Series 38, BBC ONE *2001: ''Secret Life of Ghosts and Werewolves'', BBC ONE *2001: ''

'', Series 37, BBC ONE *2001: ''Final Frontier'', BBC TWO *2001: ''Journeys in Time and Space'', BBC KNOWLEDGE *2000: ''

'', Series 36, BBC ONE *2000: ''

2000 Today ''2000 Today'' was an internationally broadcast television special to commemorate the beginning of the Year 2000. This program included New Year's Eve celebrations, musical performances, and other features from participating nations. Most inte ...

'', BBC ONE *1999: ''Eclipse Live'', BBC ONE *1999: ''The Planets'', BBC TWO

Video installations and art commissions

In 2009, to coincide with the 40th Anniversary of the flight of Apollo 11, Riley collaborated with the London Science Museum on a novel video installation called "Apollo Raw and Uncut" which projected all 23 hours of NASA's 16mm Apollo flight film, shot on Apollo missions AS-501 (Apollo 4) to AS-512 (Apollo 17). Much of this footage, including an almost 8-minute sequence documenting a long drive across the rugged Descartes Highlands had never been screened in its entirety in public before. The aim of the installation was to present the story of Apollo in as unedited and unfiltered form as possible. The work was screened again in Montreal, Quebec, in November 2009, as part of an exhibition at the

Canadian Centre for Architecture The Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA; french: Centre Canadien d'Architecture) is a museum of architecture and research centre in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is located at 1920, rue Baile (1920, Baile Street), between rue Fort (Fort Street ...

called 'Intermission: Films from a Heroic Future', which Riley also helped to curate, and a third time in 2013 at

Lincoln Lincoln most commonly refers to: * Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865), the sixteenth president of the United States * Lincoln, England, cathedral city and county town of Lincolnshire, England * Lincoln, Nebraska, the capital of Nebraska, U.S. * Lincol ...

's Digital Culture Festival Frequency Continuing the presentation of overlooked space film archives in public gallery spaces Chris collaborated with the London-based creative science agency super/collider on his 2011 show Cone Crater – a 40th anniversary celebration of

Alan Shepard Alan Bartlett Shepard Jr. (November 18, 1923 – July 21, 1998) was an American astronaut, naval aviator, test pilot, and businessman. In 1961, he became the second person and the first American to travel into space and, in 1971, he beca ...

and

Edgar Mitchell Edgar Dean Mitchell (September 17, 1930 – February 4, 2016) was a United States Navy officer and aviator, test pilot, aeronautical engineer, ufologist, and NASA astronaut. As the Lunar Module Pilot of Apollo 14 in 1971 he spent nine ...

's exploration of the Frau Mauro lunar highlands, which played at The Book Club, London as part of the Apollo's End project. In 2019 Riley collaborated with 59 Productions, on their

Smithsonian Air and Space Museum The National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution, also called the Air and Space Museum, is a museum in Washington, D.C., in the United States. Established in 1946 as the National Air Museum, it opened its main building on the Na ...

commission "Apollo 50:Go for the Moon" - writing the show and creating a film to complement projections onto the Washington Monument to tell the story of Apollo 11 for the 50th anniversary of the mission in July that year. In the run-up to NASA's

Perseverance Perseverance may refer to: Behaviour * Psychological resilience * Perseverance of the saints, a Protestant Christian teaching * Assurance (theology) Geography * Perseverance, Queensland, a locality in Australia * Perseverance Island, Seychelles ...

mission touching down on

Mars Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the second-smallest planet in the Solar System, only being larger than Mercury. In the English language, Mars is named for the Roman god of war. Mars is a terrestrial planet with a thin at ...

in 2021 Riley created an artwork called Worlds Apart, that mapped all NASA's previous Martian landing sites back onto their equivalent locations on Earth in terms of latitude and longitude, to draw attention to climate change. Following the successful Mars 2020 landing, Riley teamed up with the

BBC World Service The BBC World Service is an international broadcaster owned and operated by the BBC, with funding from the British Government through the Foreign Secretary's office. It is the world's largest external broadcaster in terms of reception a ...

radio programme Digital Planet to find volunteers to travel to Andegaon Wadi, Sawali, in the central Indian state of

Maharashtra Maharashtra (; , abbr. MH or Maha) is a state in the western peninsular region of India occupying a substantial portion of the Deccan Plateau. Maharashtra is the second-most populous state in India and the second-most populous country subdi ...

(18.445°N, 77.451°E) which mapped onto the new Perseverance landing site.

Books

Riley has written, co-written and contributed to over a dozen books, including ''Where once we stood'', a collaboration with artist and illustrator Martin Impey, nominated for a Kate Greenaway medal in 2020. * * * * * * * * * * * *

Selected articles

* * * * * * * * *

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Riley, Christopher Alumni of Imperial College London BBC Radio 4 presenters English film producers English science fiction writers English documentary filmmakers 1967 births Living people