Eric Saward

Eric Saward was born in December 1944 and attended school until the age of 18. After working for a short time as an estate agent he moved to Holland, where he lived for three years and was briefly married. On his return to England he took a succession of jobs, including as a publisher's proof editor and as a bookshop sales assistant. He then trained and worked for a while as an English teacher. He also started to write and found some success with drama scripts for radio, the first he had accepted being a play entitled "The Fall and Fall of David Moore." At around the age of 30 he gave up teaching in order to pursue a full-time writing career. To supplement his income he also filled in with some odd jobs, including a stint in the theatre as a self-taught electrician working on productions such as "Hair" and "The Canterbury Tales" at the Phoneix in Shaftesbury Avenue. He was then approached by Doctor Who script editor Christopher H. Bidmead to submit some ideas to the series, having been recommended to him by the senior drama script editor at BBC radio. This led to a commission to write the season nineteen story "The Visitation," on the strength of which he was subsequently appointed as Bidmead's successor. Since his acrimonious and controversial departure from the series some five years later he has continued to pursue a career as a freelance writer, including for German radio (his scripts being translated into German for production.)