OLD AZURIANS

Alan was born in Worthing on 27 May 1938, the son of an accountant. He attended Worthing High School for Boys up to sixth form level where he sat A-levels. While at school, he developed interests in  opera, amateur dramatics, and film, becoming a member of the Sussex Film Society. Upon leaving school he did National Service in the army before going up to Jesus College Oxford to read Modern Languages. He was already putting his typing skills, acquired while he was in the army, to good use in writing reviews for the magazine Films & Filming. During his time at Oxford his earlier interest in opera became more focussed, with Verdi, Puccini and Wagner emerging as his favourites.

 

Despite his wide-ranging interest and knowledge of the performing arts, his early career went in an entirely different direction with successive jobs as a writer for a financial magazine, Investors Chronicle, and finally The Economist in 1975. When, in March 1984, The Economist decided to expand its books section to cover the arts under the heading “Books Plus”, Alan was the natural choice. He was already freelancing by writing film reviews for other publications.

 

In 1989 Alan was hired by the Daily Telegraph, enhancing his reputation as a respected film writer until his retirement in 2001, but he continued to contribute obituaries and reviews of DVDs. Among the latter (all in 2011) were such diverse titles as: The Sci-Fi thriller Source Code;  Meek’s Cutoff, a mould-breaking Western; Submarine, a delicate treatment of the ups and downs of adolescence; and Oranges and Sunshine, an exposure of the post-war child emigration policies of the British and Australian Governments.

 

As illustrated by the above, Alan’s breadth of knowledge and interest was wide-ranging. If he had a special interest however it was in Asian cinema. He continued to attend the Busan film festival in South Korea to the end of his life. He died on 4 July 2014