21st-century British writer
Polly Morland is a British writer and documentary maker.
Career.
She worked in television for 15 years as a producer and director of documentaries for the BBC, Channel 4 and Discovery, including "The 9/11 Conspiracies" (2004), "Who Wrote the Bible?" (2004) and "The Fourth Age 410 AD - 1066 AD" in the series "Seven Ages of Britain" (2003).
Morland received a Jerwood Award in 2011 for work on her 2013 book "The Society of Timid Souls: Or How to be Brave". The award was given by the Royal Society of Literature for "to authors engaged on their first major commissioned works of non-fiction". The book is a study of courage and takes its name from a group set up by 1940s American concert pianist Bernard Gabriel to help performers overcome stage fright. In the course of the book Morland talks to "soldiers, surfers, a matador, firefighters and professional daredevils ... a man who fixes the upper sections of skyscrapers, and is afraid of heights ... people who have been diagnosed with terminal diseases ... a former armed robber."
Her 2022 work "A Fortunate Woman: A Country Doctor’s Story" was shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize. The book mirrors John Berger's 1967 work "A Fortunate Man: The Story of a Country Doctor", after Morland found a copy of this work while clearing her mother's house and realised that it was an account of a GP's life in the same area. She contacted a contemporary doctor working in the area, who herself had been inspired to take up medicine after reading Berger's book as a child, and the book is an account of her 21st-century general practice.
Morland held a Royal Society of Literature fellowship at Cardiff University in 2020–2023.
References.
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