Jack Thorne to Deliver James MacTaggart Memorial Lecture

Dramatist and playwright Jack Thorne has been tapped to deliver the James MacTaggart Memorial Lecture, the flagship session of this year’s Edinburgh TV Festival, sponsored by YouTube and Screen Scotland.

Thorne’s credits across TV, film and stage ranging from His Dark Materials, Kiri, This is England 88,86 & 90 and The Virtues to Enola Holmes, The Secret Garden, Don’t Take My Baby, The Solid Life of Sugar Water and Harry Potter and The Cursed Child. As a disabled professional, Thorne is a vocal champion, campaigner and ally of other disabled creatives both in front of and behind the camera.

Thorne will put disability center stage in his lecture, which will focus on the need for greater representation, platforming the voices of disabled professionals and the role the TV industry has to play in defining a more accessible future. This will be underpinned by his own life experience and drive to use his position and voice to influence change.

In addition to his forthcoming Channel 4 drama, Help, starring Stephen Graham and Jodie Comer, Thorne has co-written with Genevieve Barr a new BBC factual drama, the tentatively titled Independence Day? How Disabled Rights Were Won. Starring Ruth Madeley, it is based on the true story of the people behind a direct-action campaign that led to the winning of disabled civil rights in Britain.