READIN’ RUNNIN’ WRITIN’
Luther creator fled tormentors Acclaimed TV writer reveals how tiny Edinburgh bookshop offered shelter from the bullies and inspired his love of story-telling
He has written some of the most chilling, critically acclaimed TV thrillers ever.
His ruthless, relentless detective John Luther is one of Britain’s favourite small-screen anti-heroes and his new pre-apocalyptic drama Hard Sun is set in a world on the brink of annihilation.
But writer Neil Cross will reveal his sentimental side later this month when he travels to Edinburgh to show his teenage sons the city where he grew up.
It’s a place where he was bullied and beaten as a kid but it’s also one close to his heart and where he discovered his love of reading, popping into secondhand shops while his mum was at work.
And those bookshop days set him on a path that’s seen him secure a glittering small-screen career, Emmy nominations and, now, being asked to write the screenplay for an epic remake of cult classic Escape From New York.
Neil, 48, was born in Bristol but moved north of the border with his mother and step-father when he was just about to turn seven, staying until he was 13.
“The two bookshops I went to in Edinburgh played a massively disproportionate role in forming my imagination,” said Neil, as he supervised work on the new series of Luther in London.
“One was the Science Fiction Bookshop, just up from the Bridges. My mum worked on the till at St Cuthbert’s Co-op and I’d go wandering and found this bright yellow shop down a little side street.
“I was this slightly annoying eight-year-old kid and the staff were incredibly kind, recommending books and giving me my money back if I didn’t like them.
“I liked stories about outsiders, which is how I felt as a child. And I loved Bobby’s, a secondhand bookshop. It was next to where my mum got her hair set every Wednesday and you could pick up pulp fiction for 1p.
“I’d spend hours going through what they had and the most evocative smells of my childhood are of those two bookshops.”
Neil’s stepdad, Derek Cross, played a big part in his upbringing. Derek became deeply religious after a doorstep visit from two Mormons and Neil recalls “trotting off to church, wearing a suit and a kipper tie, behind my slightly pompous step-father”.
It would all end in tears when Derek borrowed money and ran off with another woman, but Neil still fondly recalls being encouraged to read.
“For a period anyway, he was fantastic. I had books read to me by Mr Cross every night. The first was
Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped and I still re-read it every couple of years as it’s the most perfect adventure story ever written.”
Always having his nose in a book, as well as coming from elsewhere and having a different accent all helped to make Neil’s Edinburgh schooldays tough ones.
“I was an odd kid. I was always reading, I didn’t like any sports and they were different times.
“It wasn’t that I went to a school full of monsters but the violence was a real part of life. I got better at running than fighting.
“My wife mocks me because whenever I go out in a city I still have to wear snug-fitting shoes so I can run away if I have to.”
Neil now lives in New Zealand with his wife Nadya and their two boys. He’s back in the UK, though, for filming of the much-anticipated fifth series of Luther, starring Idris Elba, now a major Hollywood star. “Every time we finish one we assume that’s the last and then within weeks Idris and I start missing it.
“We start texting and emailing each other and I begin ferreting away ideas. Idris is booked up years in advance and we have to find that gap in his schedule. But he’s so committed to doing Luther and he loves it so much that he’ll always find that gap.”
Hard Sun is Neil’s current big series, a gritty, futuristic thriller about two cops, played by Jim Sturgess and Agyness Deyn, discovering a cover-up that the world has just five years left.
Neil had already come up with the two characters, but had no story in mind until he was having a book clear out at home.
“I was looking out ones to take to the charity shop and started to play David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust album,” he said. “I’ve loved the song Five Years since I was a kid. “Instead of falling into despair after finding there is just five years left, the narrator sees the value in everything and everyone.
“I suddenly realised that was the world I could put these two characters in.”
When back in New Zealand Neil still feels a connection to home, through listening to UK radio and reading British papers.
And in the next few weeks he is planning a family visit to Edinburgh to show off the city that played such a huge part in his life.
Although he doesn’t get back as often as he’d like – an Edinburgh Television Festival appearance in 2013 was his last visit – he never gets lost.
“I walked around so much when I was kid I’ve got a map of it ingrained in my head,” added Neil. “Even now I know its layout better than any other British city.”