Dorothea Brooking

Background

From a family of theatricals, she was born in Berkshire and at Busage House and a finishing school in Montreux, Switzerland.

Career

She also adapted some works for the small screen (mainly early in her career) on which she worked in her other capacities. After returning to London, she worked for the British Broadcasting Corporation"s Overseas Service as a continuity announcer before being appointed as a producer in 1950 for the British Broadcasting Corporation"s Children"s Department at Alexandra Palace. Over the next quarter of a century she was responsible for numerous adaptations of children"s classics such as The Secret Garden (1952, 1960 and 1975) and The Railway Children (1951 and 1957).

She also undertook adaptations of contemporary works including an adaptation of Philippa Pearce"s novel Tom"s Midnight Garden (1974).

Leaving the British Broadcasting Corporation in the mid-1960s, after a period in schools" broadcasting, she went freelance. When Monica Sims was appointed to head the revived Children"s Department in 1968 (it had formed part of a department for the family from 1963), Brooking resumed working for the British Broadcasting Corporation. Her last responsibility as a director was the Haunting of Cassie Palmer (1982) for Television South (TVS) which had been commissioned by Anna Home, who was then Head of Children"s and Youth Programmes at the station.

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".

Achievements

• Brooking won the Pye Award for distinguished services to children"s television in 1980.