When Iwas at Bromsgrove school in the Sixties, the headmaster was a wonderful guy called Lionel Carey. He steadfastly turned a blind eye to the modern world, and seemed to embody all the positive values of the Victorian era: decency, honesty and loyalty to friends. He taught divinity and Latin and was a very religious man who worried himself greatly about the inequalities and injustices of the world.

The school was only two miles from my home and my granny lived within 300 yards, but my parents thought it would be a good idea for me to board. I was in a house adjoining the headmaster’s home, and in my last couple of years Mr Carey would invite senior boys to join him for coffee. I’d sit with him in his study with an ancient coffee machine, a meths burner crackling beneath, drinking disgusting stewed coffee and talking late into the night.

Mr Carey looked down his nose a bit at things theatrical and I was a frustrated thespian. I never let on to anyone that I wanted to be an actor, thank God - because I discovered at Oxford just how bad I was. I couldn’t tap into that reservoir of emotion that acting requires.

I had intended to study English at university but Mr Carey thought that with my debating skills (a friend and I had won the Observer Mace) I should be a barrister. He gave me books about great barristers of the early 20th century, which enthralled me, and I went off to Oxford to read law. But first, I spent a year teaching English in Senegal with Voluntary Service Overseas. That was also his influence. He believed that by helping others you discovered things about yourself - which was true for me.

After three years on the Evening Chronicle in Newcastle, I got a job as a researcher on London Weekend Television’s Weekend World, then joined Melvyn Bragg on The South Bank Show. One programme I produced was a documentary about David Lean, who was making A Passage to India. I learned a lot from Melvyn, but David has been by far the greatest influence on my career. I was a bit nervous at our first meeting; I’d been absolutely transported by his films The Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago. Luckily, I was producing the programme, not directing it. The director had a hard time - David had a meticulous eye for detail and wanted to tell him where to put the camera and how to shoot the film. I remember his jutting jaw and keen stare. When he looked at you, you felt he could see everything that was passing through your mind.

David and I had an easy relationship and became good friends. He taught me a lot about storytelling and film-making. It took about 18 months to make the documentary, and I spent a lot of time with him. We had dinners in London and I spent five weeks with him in India. One day he asked me: “Why are you making this film about somebody who is making a film when you want to make films yourself?” He was right. So I took the leap, left London Weekend Television and, encouraged by David, started writing screenplays. What made stories work for him, he said, was intense human drama with an epic backdrop, not necessarily landscape, but world events. And I had that in mind as I wrote.

I plundered the whole David Lean tribe of film-makers for my first drama, Murder by the Book, and Peggy Ashcroft, whom I’d met on A Passage to India, agreed to play the lead. David died as we were shooting my first feature film, Just Like a Woman. He’d been dead three years by the time I wrote my first novel, The Horse Whisperer. When I wrote my most recent book, The Smoke Jumper, I knew it was a David Lean kind of story. I just wish he was alive today so he could make it into a film.

Writer Nicholas Evans was talking to Pamela Coleman

THE STORY SO FAR

1950 Born in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire

1968 Teaches English with VSO in Senegal

1969 Reads law at Oxford University

1970 Tours the United States in Jonathan Miller’s student production of Hamlet

1972-75 Trainee reporter on the Evening Chronicle, Newcastle

1975-79 Researcher, then producer, of Weekend World (LWT)

1979-81 Editor of The London Programme

1982-84 Producer of The South Bank Show

1995 Publishes first novel, The Horse Whisperer (later made into a film produced by and starring Robert Redford)

1998 Publication of The Loop

2001 Publication of The Smoke Jumper

2002 The Smoke Jumper out in paperback