Eric Pringle

Eric Pringle was a British writer for radio and television who lived in the Lake District.

His work included the television series Pretenders (1972), Kate (1972) and The Carnforth Practice (1974), and the radio play Hymus Paradisi (2001) about the life of composer Herbert Howells, for which he won a Sony Award for Best Music Feature. He also wrote adaptations for a number of authors' works, including Thomas Hardy, HE Bates, Joan Aiken's The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, and JB Priestley's The Good Companions.

His association with Doctor Who came through his agent, former producer Peter Bryant, submitting two stories for consideration in August 1981, The Darkness and War Game. The latter eventually became commissioned as the two part story The Awakening for transmission in 1984. He adapted the story as a Target novelisation in 1985.

His 1993 play about Beatrix Potter, Meeting Bea, was adapted to celebrate the 150th Anniversary of the author's birth at the Old Laundry Theatre in Bowness Cumbria in 2016 at the suggestion of its patron, Victoria Wood.

2001 saw the author's first book for children published, Big George, a science fiction retelling of the legend of St George and the Dragon. This was followed up by two sequels, Big George and the Seventh Knight, and Big George and the Winter King.

He died in 2017 after suffering from lung cancer, and is survived by his wife Jenny, children David and Susannah, and granddaughter Bethany.