Life and Career
Cunliffe lived in Kendal, Cumbria for six years, and it was the small towns and villages of that area which would provide the inspiration for his most famous character – Postman Pat. Greendale, where Postman Pat is set, is based on the valley of Longsleddale, near Kendal. After the success of the TV series, which he wrote as the result of a commission from the BBC, (produced by Ivor Wood) which debuted in 1981, Cunliffe became something of a local celebrity, even having a room dedicated to him at Kendal's Museum of Lakeland Life.
Cunliffe has always had an interest in reading, stating that when he was a child he enjoyed the novels of writers such as H. Rider Haggard, Sax Rohmer, Norman Hunter's Professor Branestawm stories and W. E. Johns's Biggles books. Indeed, Cunliffe worked for many years as a librarian, and also as a teacher.
Cunliffe's other well-known creation, Rosie and Jim, was also written for television in the 1990s. He scripted and presented the first fifty episodes, then turned some of them into books.
In 2010 he released "Ghosts", a children's story for the iPad, through the Ashley Bolser Agency in Leeds.
He has written many other books for children. He now lives in Ilkley, West Yorkshire.
Read more about this topic: John Cunliffe (author)
Famous quotes containing the words life and/or career:
“All my life I’ve been running, from welfare officers, thugs, my father. See, there they are [the killers]. There on the bridge. I’m a dead man. Nosseros told me that. He told me. He said, “You got it all, but you’re a dead man, Harry Fabian.””
—Jo Eisinger, and Jules Dassin. Harry Fabian (Richard Widmark)
“From a hasty glance through the various tests I figure it out that I would be classified in Group B, indicating “Low Average Ability,” reserved usually for those just learning to speak the English Language and preparing for a career of holding a spike while another man hits it.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)