HE IS the playwright of the moment and Huddersfield is the place that seems to lie heavily on his mind.

Tonight sees the TV debut of Dewsbury-born David Peace’s Red Riding Quartet, based on the gritty novels he wrote set in West Yorkshire during the 1970s and early 1980s.

The series was filmed in and around Huddersfield and Halifax and features a stellar cast including Sean Bean and David Morrissey.

What has already showered the Channel 4 series with controversy is not the setting of the piece, which has the horrendous crimes of the Yorkshire Ripper as their backdrop.

It is more Peace’s unremitting stare of accusation levelled firmly at West Yorkshire Police, a force he has no hesitation in naming and perhaps – shaming.

“The crimes of the Yorkshire Ripper and the police hunt for the person – or persons – responsible lasted from 1975 until 1981 and, for me, cast a shadow over that entire place and time.

“I believe you should write about things that matter, about things you care for, things you know.

“What matters to me, what I care for and what I know, is the West Yorkshire of my childhood which, unfortunately, was also the Yorkshire of the Ripper.”

Peace’s treatment of the police handling of the Ripper investigation is controversial portraying a force dogged by accusations of corruption and incompetence.

Asked by the BBC if the West Yorkshire force were really as he portrayed them in the Quartet, he said: “Yes, or I wouldn’t have written the books in the way that I have.

“The cases of Stefan Kiszko, Judith Ward and Anthony Steel – all of which involved detectives from the Ripper squad – offer nothing to contradict my fictions and even a cursory examination of the Ripper investigation itself reveals a monumental degree of failure on the part of senior detectives.

“The survivors and families of the victims, and the communities that were terrorised, still do not know the whole truth and that, in itself, is corrupt.”

All of his work until 2007’s Tokyo Year Zero has been based firmly in and around West Yorkshire.

“I now live in Tokyo but, in terms of the places and the times I write about, it doesn't matter where I live. You can take the man out of Yorkshire but not the Yorkshire out of the man!”

That can also be said of the themes of many of his books.

From the days of the Yorkshire Ripper to Brian Clough’s troubled times at Leeds United, not to mention the miners’ strike, which features in his novel GB84, all his novels have a true sense of place.

Anyone who lived through the days he vividly describes will instantly recognise the atmosphere and many of the locations about which he writes.

But why, are all his works set in 1970s and 80s Yorkshire?

He says: “I was born in Dewsbury in 1967 and didn’t leave West Yorkshire until 1987 – and then only to Manchester.

“Unfortunately, I grew up in what I think was a dark period in the history of West Yorkshire.

“I’m not only thinking here of the Ripper, but also of the economic, political and social climate of the period, as I feel West Yorkshire suffered a great deal under the Thatcher government. So that has obviously ‘coloured’ my writing.

“I think, historically, West Yorkshire is very much a place of defeat and hidden histories – from William and the Harrowing of the North to the Wars of the Roses etc.

“I think, more than anywhere else in England, people in West Yorkshire know that official history is only ever written by the winners and that it’s always/usually a lie.”

Peace is probably best known for his book The Damned Untied, a fictionalised account of Brian Clough’s turbulent 44 day reign as Leeds United manager.

He had watched Clough’s inaugural game with Leeds when, as a seven-year-old, his father took him to his first football match, a pre-season friendly with Huddersfield Town.

“There are days I wish I’d never written the bleeding book,” he later admitted.

Clough’s family complained and the mid-fielder Johnny Giles received an apology in court.

“After the book, I couldn’t watch football for a year,” Peace said.

That said, the film comes out later this month starring Michael Sheen as old Big ’Ed.

Peace has come a long way since growing up in Ossett but he still holds on tightly to his West Yorkshire roots.

His move to Japan in 1994 hasn’t stopped him following his favourite football team. He follows Town via the Web.

He says that his Japanese wife has not read any of his books, and that his 11 year old son George, one of the couple’s two children, is a Manchester United fan who mocks the Terriers.

West Yorkshire continues to inspire Peace though and word has it that his next project returns to a Huddersfield setting – a chronicle of the decline of Huddersfield political giant Harold Wilson and the rise of Margaret Thatcher.

More fireworks?

David Peace's Red Riding Quartet starts on Channel Four tonight at 9pm. The Damned United is released on March 27.