Dorothea Brooking (née Smith Wright; 7 December 1916 – 23 March 1999) was an English children's television producer and director. She also contributed to works for television, mainly early in her career, and in other capacities.

Life and career

Brooking was born into a theatrical family in Eton, Buckinghamshire (now part of Berkshire), and educated at Busage House and a finishing school in

Montreux Montreux (, , ; frp, Montrolx) is a Swiss municipality and town on the shoreline of Lake Geneva at the foot of the Alps. It belongs to the district of Riviera-Pays-d'Enhaut in the canton of Vaud in Switzerland, and has a population of approxima ...

, Switzerland. Before the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

, she was an actress, under the name Daryl Wilde, and a member of the

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company, when she met her husband John Brooking, who had the stage name of John Franklyn. (They divorced in 1951.) During two years of the war, while her husband was in Africa, Brooking worked on the staff of a radio station in

Shanghai Shanghai (; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four direct-administered municipalities of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the Huangpu River flowin ...

. She managed to leave China with her son before the Japanese invaded. After returning to London, Brooking worked for the BBC's Overseas Service as a continuity announcer before being appointed as a producer in 1950 for the BBC's Children's Department at Alexandra Palace. For more than 30 years, she was responsible for numerous adaptations of children's classics for television such as ''

The Secret Garden ''The Secret Garden'' is a novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett first published in book form in 1911, after serialisation in '' The American Magazine'' (November 1910 – August 1911). Set in England, it is one of Burnett's most popular novels an ...

'' (1952, 1960 and

1975 It was also declared the ''International Women's Year'' by the United Nations and the European Architectural Heritage Year by the Council of Europe. Events January * January 1 - Watergate scandal (United States): John N. Mitchell, H. R. ...

) and ''

The Railway Children ''The Railway Children'' is a children's book by Edith Nesbit, originally serialised in ''The London Magazine'' during 1905 and published in book form in the same year. It has been adapted for the screen several times, of which the 1970 fil ...

'' (1951 and 1957). She left the BBC in the mid-1960s after a period in schools' broadcasting, and went freelance. When Monica Sims was appointed to head the revived Children's Department in 1968 (it was part of a department for the family from 1963), Brooking returned to the BBC. She also undertook adaptations of contemporary works, including one of

Philippa Pearce Ann Philippa Pearce OBE (22 January 1920 – 21 December 2006) was an English author of children's books. Best known of them is the time-slip novel ''Tom's Midnight Garden'', which won the 1958 Carnegie Medal from the Library Association, as ...

's novel ''

Tom's Midnight Garden ''Tom's Midnight Garden'' is a children's fantasy novel by Philippa Pearce. It was first published in 1958 by Oxford University Press with illustrations by Susan Einzig. It has been reissued in print many times and also adapted for radio, tele ...

'' (1974). Brooking's last responsibility as a director was the ''

Haunting of Cassie Palmer ''The Haunting of Cassie Palmer'' is a British television drama for children produced in 1981 by TVS (Television South) for the ITV network and first broadcast on 26 February 1982. The series was based on a novel by Vivien Alcock. In the Unite ...

'' (1982) for

Television South Television South (TVS) was the ITV franchise holder in the South and South East of England between 1 January 1982 at 9.25 am and 31 December 1992 at 11.59 pm. The company operated under various names, initially as 'Television South plc' and ...

(TVS), commissioned by Anna Home, then the station's head of children's and youth programmes. In her history of children's television, ''Into The Box of Delights'' (1993), Home describes Brooking as "one of the most influential makers of drama from the early Fifties onwards". Brooking won the Pye Award for distinguished services to children's television in 1980.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Brooking, Dorothea 1916 births 1999 deaths English television producers English television directors British women television producers British women television directors