Philip French

Philip French (born 1933) is a British film critic and former radio producer. French, raised in Liverpool 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 the BBC Home Service and from 1974 to 1990 he produced its successor program "Critics' Forum" on BBC 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