Britt Allcroft

Britt Allcroft (born Hilary Mary Allcroft, 14 December 1943) is a British writer, producer, director and voice actress. She is the creator of the children's television series Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends (later re-titled Thomas & Friends), Shining Time Station (with Rick Siggelkow), Mr. Conductor's Thomas Tales and Magic Adventures of Mumfie. She also wrote, co-produced and directed the film Thomas and the Magic Railroad (2000). Early life She was born Hilary Mary Allcroft on 14 December 1943 in Worthing, West Sussex, England. At the age of 16, she changed her first name to Britt as her career in British radio and television gained momentum. She went on to create a succession of programmes for the BBC and ITV during the 1970s and 1980s, including Moon Clue Game, Dance Crazy and Keepsakes. Mothers By Daughters, produced for Channel Four, was broadcast by PBS in the United States. She also worked in theatre, staging shows at the London Palladium and Drury Lane Theatres. Career While making a documentary about British steam trains in August 1979, Allcroft met the Reverend Wilbert Awdry, author of the children's book series The Railway Series. She said, "It really didn't take me long to become intrigued by the characters, the relationships between them and the nostalgia they invoked." She told him that she wanted to bring these stories to life and made an arrangement to secure certain rights through his then-publishers Kaye & Ward. In 1980, she co-founded Britt Allcroft Railway Productions (internationally known as The Britt Allcroft Company) with her husband, television producer Angus Wright. It took Allcroft four years to raise the funding for, and create, a first series of 26 episodes in collaboration with director David Mitton. The first two episodes of Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends, shot on 35 mm film, with narration by Ringo Starr in the UK, and George Carlin in the US, re-narration by Ringo Starr in the US, and music by Mike O'Donnell and Junior Campbell, were aired together for the first time on British television on 9 October 1984.