About / Bio
Gerald was born in Romford, Essex and educated at Wadham College, Oxford where he studied English Language and Literature and made a short film.
He is an author, novelist, screenwriter, script editor, copy editor, proofreader and journalist.
As a journalist he trained on the Wakefield Express, where Lindsay Anderson made his first film and the Gloucestershire Echo, where the film critic Derek Malcolm was previously a reporter. He was deputy chief sub-editor of the Reader’s Digest (UK edition) and launch editor of SelfBuild & Design magazine.
As a freelance, he specialises in house design and construction and sustainability. He was shortlisted for Consumer Magazine Property Journalist of the Year for the Property Press Awards in 2017 and 2019 and for Sustainability Journalist of the Year in 2021.
Contact
Email this writer
Agent contact details
Jane Judd. Email: [email protected].
Genres
Sample of work
Chapter 1
Gregory Underwood was happy.
It wasn’t the fulfilled man’s quiet feeling that all is well with the world. It wasn’t the sudden benediction granted by a moment of great triumph or unexpected good news. It was sudden, yes, unexpected – certainly – but it came from nowhere. A surge from the subconscious, a brilliance of heart and brain. He glowed.
It was happening to him quite a lot these days.
His father put it down to hormones. Not that Mr Underwood – a quiet, gingery man who taught nervous housewives to drive – had any special insight into his son’s mental condition. He simply observed – generally over the breakfast table – that his firstborn, in this, his seventeenth year, had grown five inches closer to the kitchen ceiling. That kind of bodily stretching was bound to stretch the mind as well. Gregory agreed. He stopped on a patch of scrubbed sward, tilting his long, lean, faintly melancholic face toward the sun. The sun was very warm. Sounds of shouting and the thudding of busy feet impinged only faintly on his consciousness. He contemplated his new state.
Perhaps romance was the answer. Not that Gregory felt romantic about anyone in particular – at least anyone he stood a chance of getting to know. It was more the fact that he could, if the opportunity arose. The impulse hung in the air – vague, tremulous, unsullied by the demands of genuine experience. He wouldn’t actually object to experience – as long as it was of the right kind. Nothing sordid – not too sordid, anyway. No, his soul craved something finer, something more exalted, something as enthralling as … football. His first love. As if on cue, something hard and leathery leapt out of the sun and smacked him fiercely on the forehead.
‘Good header! Follow it up!’
Writer's credits
Gerald is the author of 13 books, including novels, film novelisations, filmographies and a selfbuild manual. They include Gregory’s Girl, which became a GCSE set text, Sid and Nancy, Any Which Way You Can, Superstition, a co-authored autobiography, which was adapted by Eleven Film for Sky TV, Ben’s Dad and the Bone Stone, a book for 8-12 year olds, Build Your Own Brick House and numerous short stories.
His screenplays include Smiling Willie and the Tiger, an adaptation of the novel by John Harris, Summoning Angels, Unfinished Temples and The Tower and numerous short screenplays, including The Intruder starring Enver (Agent Carter, Avengers Assemble) Gjokaj. Gerald also acted as script editor on the independent film Closure, conceived, scripted, cast and shot in thirty days in LA in 2019.