Kevin Jon Davies was an animator on The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (BBC TV, 1981), Blake’s 7 (1981), Gerry Anderson’s Terrahawks (LWT, 1983) and Disney’s Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) then spent five years working on international TV commercials. He turned director in 1993 for the BBC with The Making of the Hitchhiker’s Guide and Doctor Who: (More Than) 30 Years in the Tardis. Douglas Adams asked him to art-direct The Illustrated Hitchhiker’s Guide (1994) a book with early digital composites. Dalekmania (1995), then a spell at Sci-Fi Channel, led to film dramas: Shakedown, Return of the Sontarans (1994) and Space Island One (Sky,1998). Davies produced DVD documentaries for many BBC classics: Adam Adamant Lives!, A For Andromeda, Blake’s 7 and Dad’s Army.
From 2003 Davies collaborated with Dirk Maggs on many Adams-related projects, including promos for the latter four Hitchhiker’s Guide radio series and the Live Tours. Davies researched Adams’ personal papers to add snippets in the final radio series, which led to the Sunday Times #1 Best-Seller ’42, The Wildly Improbably Ideas of Douglas Adams’ (2023) and the forthcoming book of the Hitchhiker TV scripts. Davies has hosted at Comic Cons and is a Visiting Lecturer on the Film Production MA course at The University of Hertfordshire.
His talk will cover a little of his own career, but mainly focus on that of the author Douglas Adams (1952-2001), with exciting snippets discovered in the author’s personal archives held at Cambridge.
£10 per person, booking required.
