Neil Paterson
Writing
Biography
Neil Paterson was Scottish novelist and screenwriter. He originally attended university with the intention of following in his father’s footsteps and becoming a solicitor, but quickly realized his passion laid with football after joining Edinburgh University AFC. He played for Buckie Thistle in the Highland League, and for Leith Athletic in the Scottish League and was captain of Dundee United in the 1936–37 season. He then decided to quit the sport and turned to sports journalism, landing a position with DC Thomson. He married Rose MacKenzie in 1939 and joined the Navy during the Second World War. After the war, he returned to writing and published his first novel On my Faithless Arm in 1946 under the pseudonym John Kovack. His second novel, The China Run: Being the biography of a great-grandmother, was published two years later. In 1951, Hodder & Stoughton published a collection of short stories titled And Delilah: Nine stories. The collection included a short story named Scotch Settlement, which was adapted by Paterson himself into the screenplay for the film The Kidnappers and kickstarted his career as a screenwriter. In 1959, he won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for Room on Top, based on the novel of the same name by John Braine.
Known For
An ambitious young accountant schemes to wed a wealthy factory owner's daughter, despite falling in love with a married older woman.
Room at the Top
A selfish and prideful young Dutch doctor, through a series of circumstances, comes to learn that he does indeed "need" a higher spiritual being and other people.
The Spiral Road
The owner of an impoverished circus in Communist-ruled Czechoslovokia plots to flee across the border to freedom, taking his entire troupe of performers and wild animals with him.
Man on a Tightrope
A neglected girl in post-World War II London befriends street urchins who help her build a tiny garden in a bombed-out church.
Innocent Sinners
After losing their father in the Boer War, orphaned brothers Harry and Davy must leave their home in Scotland to live with their grandmother and cantankerous grandfather in Nova Scotia. The boys want nothing more than a pet dog, but their grandfather refuses to get them one. Then, when the brothers find an abandoned baby, they decide to keep it – but the foundling may not have been abandoned after all.
The Kidnappers
An Australian "swagman" finds his wife with another man, so he takes the daughter, Buster, with him. On the road together, going from town to town and from farm to farm, father and daughter explore new depths of understanding and bonding.
The Shiralee
After returning home to a rugged island near Nova Scotia, Joanna, daughter of the local bigwig, struggles to choose between three eligible bachelors -- the rebel, the steadfast friend and the poetry-quoting newcomer. As the local lobster supply dwindles due to overfishing, the island's inhabitants encounter economic difficulties.
High Tide at Noon
Loosely based on a '50's movie of the same name, it tells the story of two young orphan boys who travel by themselves from the Old country to join their father's family in Canada. There they encounter their stern disciplinarian grandfather who has alienated himself from some of his neighbors. There is particularly no love lost between the grandfather and his Dutch neighbors, who he generalizes as being responsible for his son's death in the Boor War. A side product of this animosity is that it is keeping apart the boy's aunt and her Dutch doctor suitor. The two boys change everything though when they find a young baby on the beach...
The Little Kidnappers
A carnival boss and a little person from the sideshow compete for the same woman.
The Woman for Joe
A boy pursues his ambition to be a jockey
Devil on Horseback
An introduction to Perthshire, Scotland.