Edward Henry Willis, Baron Willis (13 January 1914 – 22 December 1992) was an English playwright, novelist and screenwriter who was also politically active in support of the Labour Party. In 1941 he became the General Secretary of the Young Communist League, the youth branch of the Communist Party of Great Britain. Early life and War service Willis was born in Tottenham, Middlesex, third child and second son of Alfred John Henry Willis (1882-1957), a bus washer who later became a bus driver, and Maria Harriet, née Meek. He recalled that when leaving school aged fourteen: "I had a two-second 'career interview' with my Headmaster. He asked me what I wished to do for the future and I told him that I intended to become a writer. His response was a cackle followed by the remark: 'You will never make a writer in a hundred years. You haven't got the imagination for it or the intelligence. Go away and learn a good trade.'" Willis was elected Chairman of the Labour League of Youth as the candidate of the left in 1937. In 1939, along with much of the League of Youth leadership, he joined the Young Communist League. He was drama critic for the Daily Worker. Willis enlisted in the Royal Fusiliers in 1939, subsequently serving in the Army Kinematograph Service. He often spoke at meetings during the Second World War in favour of opening a second front, in order to help the Red Army, which was bearing the brunt of the Nazi onslaught. Writing career His passion for drama first manifested in plays he wrote for the Unity Theatre, based in a former chapel near St Pancras, during the war. He was best known for writing the television series Dixon of Dock Green, based on the stories of Gordon Snashall, a local Chislehurst policeman with whom he was great friends; the series ran for more than twenty years. He was Chairman of the Writers' Guild of Great Britain from 1958 to 1964. Willis created several British television series such as Virgin of the Secret Service, Hunter's Walk, The Adventures of Black Beauty, Copper's End, Sergeant Cork and Mrs Thursday. Along with Berkely Mather, Willis was responsible for a huge proportion of scriptwriting for British television drama in the 1950s. He was listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the world's most prolific writer for television; he also wrote