Authors A to Z - Stephen Gallagher

Stephen Gallagher was born in Salford, Lancashire in 1954.

He studied drama and English at Hull in the mid-70s before working briefly as a documentaries researcher for YTV, and then moving to Granada Television's presentation department with the aim of becoming a drama director.

He sold a spinoff novelisation of one of his radio serials and then wrote Chimera, his first novel. In the same period he wrote a string of 90-minute Saturday Night Theatres for Radio 4 and four-part stories for two consecutive TV seasons of Doctor Who. He left Granada to go freelance in 1980.

Beginning with Valley of Lights, for the next decade Gallagher published a novel a year, each were optioned either for film or TV, and he also wrote all the screenplays. A 4-part adaptation of Chimera was made for ITV, and an adaptation of Oktober was again made for ITV in 1997.

Gallagher was closely involved with the setting-up of Chillers, YTV's highly-rated but short-lived horror anthology series, and Carnival Films' BUGS, on which he wrote 10 out of 30 shows and was script consultant on series 2 and 3.

More recent projects include the 90-minute Murder Rooms episode 'The Kingdom of Bones', and Desert Knights: the Birth of the SAS. Work currently in progress includes The Painted Bride and The Spirit Box.

Gallagher was Former Northern Chair of the Writer's Guild of Great Britain, and his website can be found at www.stephengallagher.com