Highly acclaimed dramatist and playwright, Jack Thorne, is to deliver the flagship session of this year’s Edinburgh TV Festival brought to you by YouTube and Screen Scotland; The James MacTaggart Memorial Lecture.

A celebrated and multi award-winning creator and writer of TV shows, films and stage plays ranging from His Dark Materials, Kiri, This is England 88,86 & 90 and The Virtues to Enola Holmes, The Secret Garden, Don’t Take My Baby, The Solid Life of Sugar Water and Harry Potter and The Cursed Child, as a disabled professional, Thorne is a vocal champion, campaigner and ally of other disabled creatives both in front of and behind the camera.

At a time when questions are being asked about how the industry and society at large treats those who are under-represented, Thorne will put disability centre stage. His lecture will focus on the need for greater representation, platforming the voices of disabled professionals– both visible and invisible – and the role the TV industry has to play in defining a more accessible future, underpinned by his own life experience and drive to use his position and voice to influence change.

Indeed, as well as his forthcoming Channel 4 drama, Help, starring Stephen Graham and Jodie Comer, Thorne has co-written (with Genevieve Barr) a new BBC factual drama Independence Day? How Disabled Rights Were Won (w/t) starring Ruth Madeley, based on the remarkable true story of the people behind an irrepressible campaign of direct-action that lead to the winning of disabled civil rights in Britain.

"I am ridiculously honoured to be asked to deliver this year’s MacTaggart lecture. It's an opportunity I never anticipated, but an opportunity I am determined to use. This country has a glaring problem at the moment and it's in its treatment of disabled people. In the last two years people have died who didn't need to, and those that survived were treated appallingly, ignored and shut out. We lived and live in a two-tier society, those with 'Underlying Health Conditions' (a disgusting term) and those without. Our industry has a record of shutting out disabled voices itself but now has an opportunity to step up and take responsibility, both for its history and its future. We are the empathy box in the corner of the room and we can change things. I am far from the perfect advocate for this but will do all I can to further this vital conversation."
Jack Thorne