- Philip French
Philip French (born 1933) is a British
film critic and formerradio producer. French, raised inLiverpool and educated at Oxford University, has been film critic of "The Observer " since 1978. Before that, he was deputy film critic to David Robinson at "The Times " for some years. He has also written for "Sight and Sound ", and his books include "The Movie Moguls: An Informal History of the Hollywood Tycoons " (1969) and "Westerns", which reappeared in a revised version in 2005. He also wrote the book "Cult Movies" (1999) together with Karl French.From 1959 to 1990, when he took early retirement, he was a
BBC Radio producer. In the 1960s he produced "The Critics" on theBBC Home Service and from 1974 to 1990 he produced its successor program "Critics' Forum" onBBC Radio 3 . French's appointment as film critic of "The Observer" was opposed by the then Controller of Radio 3,Stephen Hearst , who felt that it would be impossible for French to be an impartial producer while also working as a regular film critic, but he was overruled by his superior, Howard Newby (Carpenter p324).His Swedish-born wife Kersti is a translator and their son, Sean French, is one half of the
Nicci French writing team.References
*
Humphrey Carpenter (1996) "The Envy of the World: Fifty years of the BBC Third Programme and Radio 3", Weidenfeld and Nicolson [Phoenix pbk, ISBN 0-7538-0250-3]External links
* [http://www.bafta.org/learning/webcasts/in-celebration-of-philip-french,444,BA.html In Celebration of Philip French] ,
BAFTA webcast, Brighton Festival, 21 April 2008
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