Joanna Tilsley and Jessica Smith write:
We are delighted to announce the acquisition of the archive of writer, journalist and broadcaster Frank Tilsley (1904-1957).
Born, raised and educated in Levenshulme, Tilsley left school at the age of fourteen, and largely self-educated at the Carnegie Free Library which had opened at the bottom of his street in the year of his birth. Before the prestige success of his first novel, The Plebeian’s Progress (Victor Gollancz, 1933), he worked in Manchester in an engineering shop; in a shipping warehouse; as a railway clerk; as an audit clerk at an accountancy firm; and as organising secretary at the Salon Arts Club.
His 26 published novels included I’d Do It Again (Martin Secker and Warburg, 1936), which established his reputation on a high level; and Champion Road (Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1948), which was selected for publication by Graham Greene during his final year as director and literary editor at the publishing firm. Champion Road achieved both critical and commercial success on both sides of the Atlantic; and, in 1958, was adapted as a BBC Television series by the celebrated scriptwriter Constance Cox.
His final novel, Mutiny (Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1958) which was completed posthumously by his son Vincent, became his most commercially successful work. Set during the French Revolutionary War and telling the story of the 1797 Spithead Mutiny, an adaptation of the novel was released in 1962 by Columbia Pictures as the feature film H.M.S. Defiant. Directed by Lewis Gilbert, this classic naval drama starring Alec Guinness and Dirk Bogarde can still be streamed on a number of digital platforms.
During the course of his career, Tilsley also provided numerous short stories and journalistic articles to a wide array of newspapers and magazines, including the Manchester Guardian; the Manchester Evening Chronicle; The Spectator; and the Daily Herald.
Tilsley also worked in broadcasting, for both BBC radio and television, over a twenty year period – as a writer of short stories, serials and plays; as a journalist, and also as a personality in his own right – becoming, during his own lifetime, a well known and popular household name.
During 1955, The Makepeace Saga – a cycle of four plays, co-written for BBC Television with his son Vincent Tilsley – was broadcast. The Makepeace Saga, which told the story of the cotton industry through successive generations of a Lancashire family, achieved record viewing figures and was voted “Top TV Play” in a Gallup Poll.
Tilsley’s varied output drew acclaim and acknowledgement for its depiction of contemporary social and working conditions in the early 20th century during an era of economic depression. He was a socialist and lifelong member of the Labour party, and could count the politician Aneurin “Nye” Bevan amongst his many high-ranking fans. With wife Clarice Tilsley, he had two children, screenwriter and novelist Vincent Tilsley and actress and journalist Jill Tilsley.
The Frank Tilsley archive offers significant items of interest, with 10 draft manuscript notebooks, manuscripts and scripts for television and radio works, an excellent newspaper cuttings scrapbook collection, a selection of correspondence, photographs and legal and financial materials and a small amount of material relating to Tilsley’s work as a war reporter in the RAF during the Second World War.
I am honoured to have worked with poet Joanna Tilsley to bring her grandfather home to Manchester. The archive will help us to reflect and celebrate the creativity born in the city, to support our literature research corpus and also perhaps, to inspire new creatives works.