Julia Marian Jones (27 March 1923 – 9 October 2015) was a British television scriptwriter and former actress.

Early life and career Born in Liverpool suburb West Derby on 27 March 1923, and raised in Everton, Jones was one of four children born to Eva (née Collins) and Harvey Sykes Jones. After her mother's death in 1933, the family moved to Aintree, where she attended Queen Mary High School for girls, making her stage debut in a school production of William Housman's Bethlehem. After earning her school certificate in 1938,"SCHOOL CERTIFICATE EXAMINATION RESULTS: Complete List of Northern Successes; SCHOOL CERTIFICATE EXAMINATION RESULTS (Continued from Page 14)'. Liverpool Daily Post. 27 August 1938. pp. 13–15. "LIVERPOOL, QUEEN MARY HIGH SCHOOL FOR GIRLS—Gladys Allum, Hilda 8. Craig, Muriel Cross, Joan Crowther, Gladys S. Dawson, Willetta Falconer, Marjorie Foster, Annie Grabam, Marion Jackson, Audrey James, Julia M. Jones," Jones was employed as a wages clerk by the Dunlop Rubber Company and, shortly thereafter, joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service.

Jones began her career as a television writer in 1965.Harrison, George (14 January 1965). "Over the Mersey Wall: Play Switch Gives Julia a Chance; Liverpool Girl's First Play". Liverpool Echo. p. 2. Her works include the adaptation of Quiet as a Nun (1978) for the Armchair Thriller series;Farqhuar, Simon (28 November 2015). "Obituaries: Born in 1923, Julia Jones". The Independent. p. 43. Retrieved 3 April 2026. "'Take Three Girls' (1969), a deservedly popular series featuring three young independent women sharing a London flat, was the brain- child of BBC’s Head of Plays, Gerald Savory: Jones’ contribution won her first prize in the drama section at the Prague Television Festival. [...] The Piano was the story of an old lady who refuses to play along with her property-developing nephew’s plans to move her and her husband out of their home and into “a nice new bungalow” when she realises that her late father’s piano is too big for the new place. Jones had been inspired by the mass-destruction of pre-war housing, a phenomenon one journalist had described as 'the erosion of people by progress'. Many of her dramatisations were television events of their day, Our Mutual Friend in 1976 (with Churchill) being one example. The deliciously spooky Quiet As a Nun (1978), from Antonia Fraser’s novel, became the most famous of Thames’ Armchair Thriller series after Jones spotted the story’s great visual potential and recommended it; to this day it remains a cult classic and even, to her surprise and delight, made it to No 63 in Channel 4’s 100 Scariest Moments in 2003. A whole generation grew up with her dramatisations of children’s books on the BBC; especially well-remembered are the eerie The Enchanted Castle (1979) and The Phoenix and the Carpet (1976), both from books by E. Nesbit. When I asked her if she’d had a difficult battle as a woman in such a male-dominated world, she replied, 'Personally I don’t recall any of that sort of thing. In fact I was always treated so beautifully by everyone, and I just had a wonderful, wonderful time'. She remarried in 2006, and when I last spoke to her, had just started writing a musical. In 1971 she had said, 'Twenty years ago, with Joan Littlewood, I was in the avant garde. Now I’ve got to be very careful I’m not old-fashioned.'" the BBC's Miss Marple series; the pilot episode of ITV's Wycliffe (1993); a serial dramatisation of the novel, Anne of Green Gables (with Donald Churchill, 1972); the comedy-drama, Moody and Pegg (also with Donald Churchill, 1974-75); Our Mutual Friend (1976); and Tom's Midnight Garden (1989).

Personal life and death Jones married at least three times: briefly, in 1949, to musician William Harold Emmerson;"ACTRESS WEDS". Manchester Evening News. 1 March 1949. p. 7. Retrieved 3 April 2026. "Miss Julia Marion Jones, a member of the Theatre Workshop in Manchester, married at St. Paul's Church, Kersal, today, Mr. William Harold Emmerson, musician, of Stamford Hill, London. Here they are leaving the church." from 1950 until his death in 1986, to fellow actor Edmond Bennett, with whom Jones had a daughter, Thea, and son, Harvey,McNay, M. G. (28 August 1967). "Television's Mrs Gaskell; M. G. McNAY talks to Julia Jones". The Guardian. p. 4. Retrieved April 3, 2026. "So far Julia has written six or seven plays (she's not sure how many offhand), all on a similar theme. She is immersed in the industrial revolution, knows all the textbooks of the time and talks about the people as though she lives among them, which in a sense she does. She puts in three hours work a day, from breakfast to about 12:30: 'That's what I call real work, but I'm sure I'm thinking about it the rest of the time, too.' Living mentally with her characters while she is making the beds or packing off 13-year-old Thea and 9-year-old Harvey to school from their other home in Wandsworth means that even if her plots are rudimentary and conventional—'Tickle Times' turns on the young mill-owner discovering that he is the bastard son of a woman in one of the working-class families thrown out of work by the recession—the people are flesh and blood." and from 2006 until his death nine years later, to Derek Ballance.

On 9 October 2015, predeceased in February by Ballard, Jones died, aged 92, survived by the two children from her second marriage and by two grandchildren.

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