LOCKDOWN READING.... FILM & TV NOVELISATIONS

When I was a little kid growing up in the late 1970s / early 1980s movie and TV  novelisations were incredibly popular. For those films that weren't based on original novels, the novelisation was a wonderfully lucrative piece of the merchandise trade. In a time before home media, before the rise of the VHS cassette or the widespread ability to record TV shows and films from the TV, the novelisation was on hand for all those who wanted to relive the TV shows and movies that they love again and again. Sometimes the novelisation was released a little ahead of a movie's cinema release and people could actually read the book before they got to see the film.

I was guilty of doing just that on one occasion.

Back in the summer of 1983 I was 9 years old and a huge Star Wars fan. Naturally, being a wee ankle-snapper, I just couldn't wait to see the new film Return of the Jedi, and having spied the novelisation while on a 2 week holiday in Bridlington, I immediately bought the book and sat on the beach while the sun shone overhead and the rest of my family splashed in the sea, built sandcastles and did everything else that a family is supposed to do while on their jolly summer hols, and I sat there quietly and read the novelisation of a film I hadn't seen yet. Nowadays that would be called 'spoilering myself', but I didn't care. After I was finished I was still just as excited about seeing the film, but I was so happy having had the opportunity to experience it in some format and this was enough to hold my excitement in check until we got home and was able to get to the cinema.

Growing up I was surrounded by novelisations. We had, in our living room, a small cupboard we used to call (rather imaginatively) the Book Cupboard. On 3 large shelves, each piled 3 deep, were my mum's collection of horror novels, short story collections, Star Trek books and TV & movie novelisations. Between them my mum and my sister had a large collection of novelisations of the 70s/80s show The Professionals - a collection that they were kind enough to pass on to me, which now sits on my book shelf (see below pic). A few years later (when I was about 12), my Aunty Marg and Uncle Jack bought a small caravan which they kept permanently on a tiny horse shoe shaped campsite in Sewerby, Bridlington. Uncle Jack was a rapacious reader, and on every shelf and every surface of this caravan there were stacks upon stacks of war novels by Jack Higgins, Sven Hassel and Alistair MacLean, Cold War & Spy thrillers by Craig Thomas, Robert Ludlum and Eric Van Lustbader - there were also lots of TV novelisations for ITV shows such as Fox, Minder, Auf Wiedershen, Pet and Survivors.

Over the years many of the books that my mum owned were either given away, thrown out in a house move, or misplaced. For the past couple of decades I've been attempting to replace this collection, all those books I grew up reading, cherishing, loving. I am attempting to find them in the original editions that my mum once owned with the same covers. So far I've managed to replace about half of those books, and I'm always on the lookout whenever I go into second hand and rare bookshop or charity shops.

The novelisation isn't completely dead, thanks mostly to Titan Books, and I still collect the new novelisations - their reprints of Alien, Aliens, Alien 3, Alien: Covenant and the 2018 sequel Halloween.

I've been meaning to re-read (and in some cases read for the first time) these wonderful novelisations, and I think that our current situation would be an excellent time to revisit those happier and simpler times. Even in a time when films and TV are available via a variety of home media formats virtually instantly, I still think the novelisation has a place as a legitimate piece of the merchandise trade, and fingers crossed it begins to flourish again like it once did when I was young.