Is Pauline Campbell’s life destined to be dramatised in television documentary drama?

Originally published by: Frances Laing
27th May 2010

Prisons campaigner Pauline Campbell who died on the 15th. May, 2008 became known as a “suffragette of penal reform”. Like the suffragettes of the 1920s – when she died many of her papers and records of core aspects of her life and work were lost. The police had confiscated Pauline’s computer and belongings were taken away in bin bags.

Is Pauline’s life now destined to become the subject of a television documentary drama? The gifted screen writer Emilia di Girolamo has been commissioned to write a script. Emilia visits Cheshire this week. Of course we know the journey from page to television is a long one – and brings many challenges with it. Only when the script is finished will it be considered as a story for the screen.

The documentary-drama-in-the-making would have the prison campaigning that Pauline was a part of as a central focus.

In the years since Pauline’s death I have researched and recorded many of the lesser-known aspects of this campaign. I met Pauline in 2005. I believe the public meeting I organised in Chester in 2006 which I had asked her to chair must have marked the onset of her public appearances and her political engagement

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