Malcolm Ainsworth Hulke (21 November 1924 – 6 July 1979) was a British television writer and author of the industry "bible" Writing for Television in the 70s. He is remembered chiefly for his work on the science fiction series Doctor Who although he contributed to many popular television series of the era. Early life Known as "Mac" throughout his life, Hulke was born out of wedlock in 1924 and never knew his father. He later discussed the social stigma of illegitimacy and his personal experiences of it in a 1964 radio documentary and a 1973 op-ed piece in The Observer. He lived with his mother, Marian, until her death in 1943 in Cumberland. In 1945 he was conscripted into the Royal Navy. Impressed by the Russian Prisoners of War he met in Norway and by the Red Army's defeat of the Nazis on the Eastern Front, Hulke joined the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1945 and worked briefly as a typist in the party's headquarters. He left the party in 1951, objecting to the Soviet Union's hostility to Yugoslavia and its line on the Korean War, but soon rejoined, and appears to have remained a member of the party, on until the early 1960s. His politics remained firmly on the left, and this was reflected in his writings, which often explored anti-authoritarian, environmental, and humanist themes. In January 2015, Five Leaves Press published a short study of his work, Doctor Who and the Communist: Malcolm Hulke and his career in television, written by Michael Herbert.In January 2023 Michael Herbert contributed a chapter on Malcolm Hulke to an anthology of writing on television series in the 1970s, Survival TV, edited by Rodney Marshall <ref> [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Survival-TV-1970s-Britain-Television/dp/B0BRLZ3YWF Survival TV: 1970s Britain & the Television Series,"] edited by Rodney Marshall (2023) </ref> Michael Herbert is working on a full length biography of Hulke. Career In the 1950s and 1960s, Hulke was involved with the socialist Unity Theatre, serving as its production manager in the mid-1950s, and wrote a booklet in 1961 celebrating the theatre's 25th anniversary. Hulke met writer Eric Paice at Unity and the two wrote as a team for television beginning in the late-1950s with “This Day in Fear”, which was produced by BBC Television in 1958 as part of its Television Playwright anthology series. The pair then wrote four plays for ABC's Armchair Theatre, produced by future Doctor Who creator