Award-winning author Nigel Hinton wrote his first story as a dare for a class he was teaching at the time. His students encouraged him to get the resulting story, Collision Course, published, and he succeeded after two years. Nigel Hinton had been teaching for ten years and carried on teaching part-time until he decided, after a year of acting, to concentrate on writing full time.

Nigel Hinton has written books for teenagers and younger readers but also one for people learning English, one for adults and scripts for TV and movies. He was always more interested in reading, cinema and rock music than school when he was a teenager and these passions have strongly influenced his writing, an example being Buddy, the first in the bestselling Buddy trilogy. Buddy was adapted for BBC schools TV and when the sequel Buddy’s Song was made into a film, Hinton wrote the screenplay as well as nine songs included on the soundtrack.

Nigel Hinton’s interest in film and screenplay is reflected in his writing technique:
“As I write, I ‘see’ each scene of the story like a film inside my head. Most of the time the characters are doing what I tell them to but they often also do things that I hadn’t expected, or I ‘see’ something that makes me change what I’d originally started to do.”
Book List
The Beaver Towers Series…
The Buddy Trilogy
Buddy is the bestselling of all of Nigel Hinton’s teenage books. Buddy has a father who is a rock singer, interested only in Elvis and bikes. When Buddy’s mum walks out on the two, they have to work on their relationship. Buddy soon realises that his father is involved in something more serious than he expected.
In Buddy’s Song, sequel to Buddy, Buddy learns to play the guitar and sends his dad in prison a tape to cheer him up. Music helps Buddy escape from his worries and yet it brings on worries of its own when Buddy has to choose between staying on at school and a musical career.
When the film Buddy’s Song was released, one of the songs became a number one hit. Hinton saw this as an opportunity to write about Buddy’s recording career. In Buddy’s Blues we meet Charmaine and Buddy’s band, ‘The Bosses’.
Novels

In Collision Course, Ray steels a motorbike. He can’t resist a joy ride and ends up killing a woman in an accident. No one sees the accident and Ray battles with his conscience.
The Finders is a fantasy story in which good conquers evil. The story is based on people pretending to be something they aren’t.
Partners in Crime is based on an old folk song which tells of betrayal and murder, particularly the line ‘So slowly, slowly he stood up’. The story is about teenagers involved in drug dealing.
Time Bomb is set in post-war Britain and follows 11-year-old Andy and his friends as they experience growing up during the summer before secondary school. The discovery of an unexploded bomb leads to an awful life-changing decision.

Adult Novel
Nearly hitting a bird whilst driving his car along a country lane was Hinton’s starting point for writing The Heart of the Valley.
Other
The TV Script of Buddy (series; produced on BBC-TV), edited by Ray Speakman, Heinemann Education (London, England), 1987.
Buddy’s Song (television film; based on Hinton’s novel), produced 1990.
Le café des Reves (television series), BBC Educational Publishing/Longman (London, England), 1994.
The Play of Buddy’s Song, Heinemann (Oxford, England), 1994.
Clementine (television series), British Broadcasting Corporation, 1995.
Isabel (television series), British Broadcasting Corporation, 1997.
Contributor to books, including Peel’s Men, Hamlyn, 1978; and The Book of Numbers, Random House, 1979.

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