Peter Spence


Peter Spence is an English journalist and writer. He is perhaps best known for creating and writing the British sitcom To the Manor Born.

Early life

Born in 1944, Peter Spence was educated at Bromsgrove School, Worcestershire. At the age of 18, he became a reporter for the Birmingham Post and Mail. Around the same times, he joined the Territorial Army. He studied Politics and American Studies at Nottingham University and graduated in 1968 and became a professional writer in the same year.

Career

Peter Spence has written for many television shows including Not the Nine O'Clock News, Crackerjack and Rosemary & Thyme. In the early-1970s, Peter married into the Taylor family who owned and ran Cricket St Thomas Wildlife Park in Somerset. This provided him with a fund of anecdotes which he compiled into a book entitled "some of our best friends are animals".
A few years later in the mid 1970s he created To the Manor Born, and after a radio pilot was made, the series aired on television from 1979 to 1981. Out of 21 episodes, he wrote 20 of them. The manor shown in the opening credits is in fact Cricket St Thomas - the home of his in-laws.
Spence has also written for radio, including Roy Castle Show and Windsor Davies Presents.