Barry Letts - Later Work and Personal Life

Later Work and Personal Life

His other work included producing and co-creating Moonbase 3 with Terrance Dicks.

After leaving Doctor Who, he went back to a mixture of directing and producing at the BBC. He directed numerous series and serials, before settling into a role as producer of the BBC "Sunday Classic" serials. He oversaw more than 25 serials in this capacity over an 8-year period, including Nicholas Nickleby, Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities, The Hound of the Baskervilles (starring Tom Baker), The Invisible Man, Pinocchio, Gulliver in Lilliput, Alice in Wonderland, Lorna Doone, Little Lord Fauntleroy, The Children of the New Forest, several other Dickens novels and Beau Geste. He also produced Sense and Sensibility for the BBC, and his production of Jane Eyre starring Timothy Dalton and Zelah Clarke was nominated for a BAFTA award.

Later he directed David Copperfield for the BBC and was a director on the soap opera EastEnders from 1990 to 1992.

He played a very small cameo in the film Exodus, broadcast on UK Channel 4.

He continued to record commentaries and interviews for DVD releases of his Doctor Who episodes up until his death in 2009. In June 2008 he recorded a long in-vision interview covering his entire career, and his Doctor Who years in particular, excerpts of which will continue to be widely used on future DVD releases. His autobiography, Who and Me was published in November 2009, then released as a talking book on CD, read by Letts himself, and later broadcast on BBC Radio 7.

Letts also taught directing for the BBC at Elstree Studios.

Letts suffered from cancer for many years before his death. Barry's wife, Muriel, had died earlier in the year. Letts is survived by his three children: Dominic, Crispin and Joanna.

Following Letts’ death, Tom Baker was interviewed for BBC Radio 4’s Last Word to pay tribute. He described Letts as “the big link in changing my entire life”. Doctor Who executive producer Russell T Davies also wrote a personal tribute to him in issue #415 of Doctor Who Magazine.

The November 2009 Doctor Who episode "The Waters of Mars" was dedicated to his memory. Issue #417 of Doctor Who Magazine included a 12-page tribute to Letts and featured contributions from former colleagues including Frazer Hines, Mary Peach, Terrance Dicks, Nicholas Courtney, Graeme Harper, Katy Manning, Christopher Barry, Elisabeth Sladen and Tom Baker.