World Book Day – Screenwriter Talk

Screenwriter and Class of 2010 alumna Matilda Wnek returned to talk to pupils as part of our extended World Book Day celebrations.

In a morning assembly, Matilda sat down for a conversation with our Deputy Head Girl (Academic), Katie, talking about her career as a writer for television and how her love of reading, instilled during her school days, helped to shape her career.

Matilda, who joined in the Junior School, was a voracious reader who adored her English lessons throughout her time at South Hampstead. Matilda reflected on a seminal moment when, in Year 10, she read Virginia Woolf for the first time – an experience that opened up her mind to the power of literature, led her on the path to study English Literature at Cambridge, and eventually on to pursue a writing career.

Having started to write plays and comedy scripts whilst at university, Matilda slowly built her experience as a writer within the television industry and has since written for both comedy and drama series including BBC’s Virgil and Capital. Speaking to the girls about her television career – still a highly-competitive and male-dominated field – Matilda stressed the immense value in reading for pleasure. She encouraged the girls to read as much as possible in order to ignite their imaginations and maintain their self-discipline. As she told the girls: “Once you leave school, reading is a relationship you have to create yourself. It is an act of rebellion when competing against other priorities or distractions, but is one of the richest and most complex pleasures life can offer.”

More snapshots of this year’s World Book Day celebrations are available here and on the school’s Instagram page.