Nigel Randell Evans

Nigel Randell Evans (often credited simply as Nigel Evans) (born 1943-2014) was a British author, campaigner for people with disabilities and film maker, with over 40 social documentaries to his credit, including Walter the feature film screened on the inaugural night of the UK’s Channel 4.[1]

Biography

Nigel Randell Evans was the eldest son of Air Chief Marshal Sir Donald Randell Evans (1912-1975) and Pauline Evans.[1]

In 1973 he was awarded a Churchill Fellowship to explore new approaches to raising public awareness to the plight of marginalised people.[1] As a result he founded a charity One-to-One that aspired to break the marginalisation of people in mental hospitals.[2] His campaigning work with people with disabilities has been a regular theme in his film making since the start of his career at the beginning of the 1970s. He has subsequently made over 40 social documentaries including Silent Minority (1981) which received national attention in the UK with its exposure of the neglect and abuse of patients in British mental hospitals.[3] When Channel 4 was launched in 1982, as the fourth national TV service in the UK, joining the two public BBC channels and commercial network ITV, his film ‘Walter’, directed by Stephen Frears and starring Ian McKellen, was the feature film on its inaugural night.[4] His 1983 film, The Skin Horse, a film essay exploring the sexual and emotional needs of people with a disability, won Channel 4 its first Royal Television Society Award.[5] The film's other awards include the George Foster Peabody Broadcasting Award from the University of Georgia.[6] He was commissioned by Channel Four to make its first documentary drama in sign language, Pictures in the Mind, in 1987,.[7][8] In 1995 Evans was asked to make the BBC's contribution to World Aids Day. The resulting film, "The Age of Innocence", was reviewed in the Times as "the best programme yet made about Aids in this country".[9][10] He marked his retirement from television in 1996 with a celebration of life for the over sixties, Grey Sex [11]

After two decades of film making, he then qualified as a psycho-geriatric social worker in the mid 1990s and practiced in West London.[1]

His first book, The White Headhunter, an historical study of castaway James Renton in the Pacific's Solomon Islands, was published in 2003 under the name Nigel Randell. He published his second Pacific book, Boys from the Sky – the curious genesis of the world’s first ethnography, also as Nigel Randell, in 2013.

Evans retired to the Pacific island of Tonga.[1]

Selected filmography

Non fiction books (published under the name Nigel Randell):

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Mordaunt, Richard (18 September 2014). "Nigel Evans obituary". The Guardian. Retrieved 31 May 2015.
  2. ↑ "Growing Success of One-to-One". New Society. 11 August 1975
  3. ↑ "But look at the ratings". Daily Telegraph. 11 June 1981
  4. ↑ Barnes, Julian, 2 January 1982, "First Thoughts on Four". The Observer
  5. ↑ "RTS NATIONAL AWARDS" (PDF). Royal Television Society. Retrieved 31 May 2015.
  6. ↑ "A Shattering look at how we de-sexed the Handicapped". Chicago Sun-Times. 3 November 1984
  7. ↑ "Now Listen Here" Today, 7 April 1987
  8. ↑ "Removing the Sound Barrier" Daily Mail, 7 April 1987
  9. ↑ Truss, Lynne, 6 December 1995,"At Last Some Straight Talk About AIDS". The Times
  10. ↑ Massingberd, Hugh, 6 December 1995, "Tackling the Mythology of AIDS". The Daily Telegraph
  11. ↑ Odone, Cristina, 8 May 1996,. "It's Not All Bad News for Grown Ups". The Daily Telegraph
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