Writer and former Keighley resident Willis Hall has won an award for his continued contribution to Yorkshire culture.

Mr Hall picked up the Yorkshire Arts and Entertainment Person-ality Award along with Keith Waterhouse, another of the county's most popular writers.

The award celebrates their achievements both individually and collectively for their outstanding contribution to the cultural life of the county.

Together they have produced work for the cinema, TV and theatre, including the films Billy Liar, A Kind of Loving, Whistle Down the Wind and the TV series Worzel Gummidge and Budgie.

Willis, once a resident of Oldfield's Laverock Hall, was also a keen rugby fan, joining the board of the then Keighley Rugby League FC in 1983.

At the tender age of 17 Willis joined the Army, taking him to the Far East for several years.

During this time he began writing, both as a scriptwriter for the Chinese Schools Department of Radio Malaya, and also as a reporter for the Singapore Stan-dard.

Back in the UK, he had his first major success when The Long and The Short and The Tall won the Evening Standard Best Play of the Year Award in 1958.

Renewing a childhood friendship with Keith Waterhouse, they adapted Waterhouse's novel Billy Liar for the theatre. They have subsequently collaborated on many plays and musicals including their adaptations of two Eduardo De Philippo plays; Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Filumena. Both won Play of the Year Awards.

As a solo writer, Mr Hall has written extensively for the theatre and television.

He is a prolific children's author and scripted The Reluctant Dragon which won the BAFTA Best Animation Film Award in 1988.

His series of novels about a vegetarian vampire have also proved consistently popular over the years and have since been translated into most European languages.

The latest in this series was Vampire Park which was published in 1997 along with the re-issue of all of the earlier vampire books.

A new book in the series, Vampire Island, will be released in the UK later this month.

Willis also wrote the extremely successful adaptation of Jane Austen's romantic novel Mansfield Park for the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield which has subsequently been produced numerous times elsewhere.

Other adaptations of classic novels have included Charlotte Bront's Jane Eyre and The Three Musketeers.

Mr Hall is currently working on an adaptation of a new Peter Pan musical, commissioned by Imagination in the UK.

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