Contribution
Among buildings designed by Poulson are the City House (1962) and International Pool (1965–1968), both in Leeds, and Forster House, Bradford, which was demolished in 2005 as part of the Forster Square redevelopment.
In an indirect way, Poulson did make a contribution to the UK's broadcasting culture. A special edition of the investigative ITV series World in Action, The Friends and Influence of John L Poulson, became a cause célèbre in the debate about the power of Britain's television regulators to interfere with broadcast journalism. The Poulson programme was banned by the then regulator, the ITA, even though its members had not seen it. A furious debate followed in which newspapers as varied as The Sunday Times and Socialist Worker united in calling for an end to such "censorship". Granada Television, the makers of World In Action, broadcast a blank screen as a protest against the banning. There was some irony in this: the editor of World in Action was Raymond Fitzwalter who earlier, as deputy news editor of the Telegraph & Argus in Bradford, had led an investigation into Poulson's activities, which the newspaper published. Eventually, after the film was shown to the ITA, it was transmitted on 30 April 1973, three months late, and under a different title, The Rise And Fall of John Poulson.
The 1996, BBC television drama serial Our Friends in the North, written by Peter Flannery, contains a character, John Edwards, who is closely based on Poulson, played by Geoffrey Hutchings. One of the reasons the production took so long to reach the screen – Flannery had originally written it for the stage in 1982 – was the fear of the BBC that Poulson and others fictionalised in the drama might take legal action. In the event, the deaths of Poulson and T. Dan Smith in 1993 finally allowed the production to commence.
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