Peter R. Newman

Who was Peter R. Newman?

Peter Richard Newman was an English television screenwriter in the 1950s and 1960s. He was born in Ilford in the London Borough of Redbridge. He wrote a television play, Yesterday's Enemy, which he later turned into a screenplay for Val Guest; the film version was released in 1959. As a three-act play, it was published by Samuel French in 1960.

He wrote The Sensorites for the first season of Doctor Who in 1963-64. This would be Newman's only contribution to Doctor Who, and indeed his last credit for British television. He subsequently developed writer's block and took a job as a porter at the Tate Gallery. He died in 1975 after suffering a cerebral haemorrhage following an accident at the Gallery in which he fell down some stairs and hit his head on an iron radiator.