Recent
“The Young Oliver Sacks” – Oliver Sacks before he was famous, in 1950s Oxford.
“How Can I Light Them, If They Move?” – British Cinema, Carol Reed and The Fallen Idol.
A to C – why the most beautiful sequence in The Third Man was cut.
From the Everyman to The 39 Steps – a personal look back to the time when there was “only one Everyman”.
These pages contain some thoughts on mostly the British cinema, which I have been writing about since the London Magazine published a piece I wrote on Robert Hamer more than 30 years ago. I never got round to banking the cheque from the magazine’s editor Alan Ross, but it is good to have on my wall now as a memento of the wise old man who got me going.
While there is no plan as such, there are some recurring themes: Powell & Pressburger, Lindsay Anderson, The Third Man, Vivien Leigh …
And every now and then it has been a pleasure to write about not just the British cinema but other things – for example, remembering the writer John Fowles, or old friends such as Henrietta Moraes, or old jobs such as Penguin, or this splendid old town in which I live, London.
What you’ll find here is not particularly topical, but I am pleased to be able to say that my book The Faber Book of British Cinema will be published early in 2027, in good time to celebrate the 100th anniversary of talking pictures.