Russell T Davies tells five decades of TV in The Queerest of Folk

Russell T Davies has put five decades of British television between hard covers.

His memoir, The Queerest of Folk: A Life in Television, was published in hardback by Bantam on 8 October 2026. Bantam, an imprint — a named list inside a larger publishing house — issued the book after Transworld acquired it from the screenwriter and producer The Bookseller.

Early notices describe two different books in one. The Guardian calls it a warm and gossipy autobiography offering a peek behind the curtains of the British television industry The Guardian. The same review says it goes light on Davies's own life story and gallops through five decades in the business using his shows as its framework.

The Telegraph reads it another way. Its review, headlined ‘Is Russell T Davies the angriest man in television?’, describes the book as a serious manifesto that will mean most to people who take television seriously The Telegraph.

The career it charts runs from children's shows and soaps to Coronation Street and Doctor Who. Davies was born in Swansea in 1963 and studied English at Oxford. He started with puppets.

That was children's television, writing for puppet characters, before a move to Granada Studios in Manchester. There he worked alongside Sally Wainwright, Paul Abbott and Kay Mellor. He went on to create a period drama called The Grand.

Then came Queer As Folk. The Manchester-set drama about gay life went out in 1999 on Channel 4, the British broadcaster. It was originally going to be called Queer As Fuck until a publicist pointed out it would never be discussed by Richard and Judy, the daytime television presenters whose book club and interviews could make a show part of the national conversation.

Davies revived Doctor Who in 2005. His first Doctor was Christopher Eccleston, followed by David Tennant. He later returned to the science-fiction series with Ncuti Gatwa, whose tenure was short-lived.

The book keeps personal detail spare. It records that Davies's husband Andrew died of brain cancer in 2018. The emphasis stays on the programmes, the commissions and the people who make them.