Richard Michael "Kip" Carpenter (14 August 1929 – 26 February 2012) was an English screenwriter, author, and actor who created a number of British television series, including Robin of Sherwood and Catweazle. Early life Born in King's Lynn, Norfolk, Carpenter attended the Old Vic Theatre School before starting an acting career by working in repertory theatre. Career Carpenter appeared in occasional films, but was mostly active on British TV in the 1960s as a character actor, on one occasion opposite Tony Hancock in one of his last shows for the BBC, commonly known as "The Bowmans". Other TV shows in which he appeared in the 1960s included Z-Cars, Dixon of Dock Green, Gideon's Way, Sherlock Holmes and The Baron. In 1969, Carpenter created Catweazle, the children's series about an unfortunate wizard from the 11th century who is accidentally transported to the present day. This changed the course of his career substantially. Carpenter earned international recognition and a Writers' Guild award for creating the cult children's TV series. During the 1970s, he wrote the series The Ghosts of Motley Hall (1976–1978), Dick Turpin (1979–1982), parts of the series The Famous Five and Doctor Snuggles, and 17 episodes of The Adventures of Black Beauty for ITV; and Cloud Burst, The Boy from Space and The King's Dragon as part of BBC's Look and Read (1967–2004) programme for schools, He presented all episodes of "Cloud Burst". In the 1980s came the historical adventures Smuggler and its later antipodean-based follow-up Adventurer and between them, the lavish HTV production Robin of Sherwood, which ran for three series. As Anthony Hayward wrote in this cited obituary: Carpenter re-imagined the Robin Hood legend in Robin of Sherwood (1984–86). Mysticism was one of its distinctive ingredients, reflecting a renewed interest in paganism, as well as the concerns of the growing environmental movement and – through the idealism of the hero Carpenter then worked on a number of series for children and families in the 1990s (The Winjin' Pom, Stanley's Dragon and Out of Sight), some of which (The Borrowers, The Return of the Borrowers and The Scarlet Pimpernel) were based on classic novels. Carpenter wrote novelisations of many of the early series he created: Catweazle, Cloud Burst, The Ghosts of Motley Hall, Smuggler, Robin of Sherwood (two books) and two books of Dick Turpin. Personal life Carpenter married Annabelle Lee in 1954. They lived in Ayot Bury, Ayot