Christopher Riley

Christopher Riley is a film producer, director and writer specialising in science, engineering and history. His work has been celebrated by BAFTA, the US Television Academy, the Royal Television Society and the Sundance Institute. He holds a doctorate from Imperial College and is a Visiting Professor of Science and Media at the University of Lincoln. His latest book on the Apollo astronauts' adventures on the Moon - "Where once we stood" is a collaboration with artist Martin Impey. His best selling Apollo 11 owner's workshop manual has also been updated and re-released for the 50th anniversary of the first Moon landing in 2019. Chris has directed and produced on over one hundred programmes for the BBC - including their flagship science and technology strand 'Tomorrow's World' and the cult science show 'Rough Science'. He was the producer of the BBC's blockbuster drama documentary 'Space Odyssey - Voyage to the Planets', and conceived, produced and directed on the Sundance award-winning feature documentary film 'In the Shadow of the Moon'. He was the producer of the restored director's cut of NASA's original Apollo doc Moonwalk One, released on DVD for the 40th Anniversary of Apollo 11 in 2009. A Blu-ray of the film was released in 2019. He is the producer and director of the unique Yuri Gagarin 50th Anniversary film project First Orbit; which collaborated with ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli to film a new view of what Yuri Gagarin would have seen on his pioneering orbit of the Earth in 1961. The film is available on DVD and BluRay from Amazon, subtitled into 30 languages. During the summer of 2011 he produced a film with Kevin Fong for BBC TWO on the final flight of NASA's Space Shuttle. In 2012 he produced a film about the Voyager missions for BBC FOUR, presented by Dallas Campbell, and directed a major biopic on Neil Armstrong for the BBC. His 2013 films include 'The Fantastic Mr Feynman' - a biography of the nobel prize winning physicist Richard Feynman, broadcast to celebrate what would have been his 95th birthday. Chris is the author of more than forty articles and books on astronomy and planetary science and regularly lectures on this and other topics. Chris wrote the chapter on Yuri Gagarin's 1961 visit to London in the 2011 British Council book 'Gagarin in Britain' and co-authored a chapter in the 2012 book International Cooperation for Development of Space, from the Aerospace Technology Working Group, a non-profit Space Policy Program Innovation Centre. His original book for Haynes on Apollo 11 - 'an owner's workshop manual', was published in June 2009 and made it into Amazon's top ten science books of that year. His follow up Haynes manual on the Apollo Lunar Rover came out in 2012. He is a contributing author to Faber and Faber's 2012 book 'Big Questions from Little People', and their follow up 2013 books 'Does my Goldfish Know who I am?' and 'Why Can't I Tickle Myself'.