sentences:  He suffered a heart attack in June 1961, dying suddenly from a second heart attack in 1965, and is buried in Belfast City Cemetery.Thompson was encouraged to begin writing for radio in 1955, aged 39, by novelist and radio producer Sam Hanna Bell, who overheard him telling stories of shipyard life in a pub.His first piece, the radio documentary feature "Brush in Hand" about shipyard apprenticeship, was broadcast on BBC Northern Ireland in 1956.