Peter Bradshaw | |
|---|---|
 Bradshaw in 2013 | |
| Born | Peter Nicholas Bradshaw 19 June 1962 |
| Education | Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School |
| Alma mater | University of Cambridge (BA, PhD) |
| Occupations |
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| Years active | 1997–present |
| Employer(s) | The Guardian Evening Standard |
| Spouse | Caroline S. Hill |
| Website | theguardian |
Peter Nicholas Bradshaw (born 19 June 1962) is a British writer and film critic. He has been chief film critic at The Guardian since 1999, and is a contributing editor at Esquire .
Bradshaw was educated at Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School in Hertfordshire [1] and studied English at Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he was president of the Cambridge Footlights. He was awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1984, followed by postgraduate research in the Early Modern period in which he studied with Lisa Jardine and Anne Barton. He received his PhD in 1989. [2]
In the 1990s, Bradshaw was employed by the Evening Standard as a columnist, and during the 1997 general election campaign, editor Max Hastings asked him to write a series of parodic diary entries purporting to be written by the Conservative MP and historian Alan Clark, which Clark thought deceptive and which were the subject of a court case resolved in January 1998, the first in newspaper history in which the subject of a satire sued its author. Bradshaw was not put into the witness box by his QC Peter Prescott, and the judge Gavin Lightman found in Clark's favour, granting an injunction, deciding that Bradshaw's articles were then being published in a form that "a substantial number of readers" would believe they were genuinely being written by Alan Clark. [3] Bradshaw found it "the most bizarre and surreal business of my professional life. I'm very flattered that Mr Clark should go to all this trouble and expense in suing me like this." [4]
Since 1999, Bradshaw has been chief film critic for The Guardian , writing a weekly review column every Friday for the paper's Film&Music section. He is a regular guest reviewer on the Film... programme broadcast on BBC One. He was on the Un Certain Regard jury for 2011 Cannes Film Festival.
He wrote and performed a BBC Radio 4 programme entitled For One Horrible Moment, recorded on 10 October 1998 and first broadcast on 20 January 1999, which chronicled a young man's coming of age in 1970s Cambridgeshire. His bittersweet short story Reunion, first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 21 October 2016, was narrated by Tom Hollander and described as "sad and sly, and connected impermeably to the mid-Seventies and what it felt like to be young". [5] Another short story, entitled Neighbours Of Zero, first broadcast on Radio 4 on 17 November 2017, was narrated by Daniel Mays. [6] Bradshaw's story Senior Moment, first broadcast on Radio 4 on 22 May 2020, was narrated by Michael Maloney. [7] Bradshaw co-wrote and acted in David Baddiel's sitcom Baddiel's Syndrome , first aired on Sky One. [8]
In a 2022 Sight & Sound poll of cinema's greatest films, Bradshaw indicated that his ten favourites are: [9]
Bradshaw has been shortlisted four times at The Press Awards in the Critic of the Year category, in 2001, 2007, 2013 and 2014, "Highly Commended" the last time. [10]
Alan Bennett is an English playwright, author, actor and screenwriter. Over his entertainment career he has received numerous awards and honours including two BAFTA Awards, four Laurence Olivier Awards, and two Tony Awards. He also earned an Academy Award nomination for his film The Madness of King George (1994). In 2005 he received the Society of London Theatre Special Award.
Sir Kenneth Charles Branagh is a British actor and filmmaker. Born in Belfast and raised primarily in Reading, Berkshire, Branagh trained at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and served as its president from 2015 to 2024. His accolades include an Academy Award, four BAFTAs, two Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and an Olivier Award. He was appointed a Knight Bachelor in the 2012 Birthday Honours, and was given Freedom of the City in his native Belfast in 2018. In 2020, he was ranked in 20th place on The Irish Times' list of Ireland's greatest film actors.
Dame Julia Mary Walters, known professionally as Julie Walters, is an English actress. She is the recipient of four British Academy Television Awards, two British Academy Film Awards, two International Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and an Olivier Award.
Armando Giovanni Iannucci is a Scottish satirist, writer, director, producer, performer and panellist. Born in Glasgow to Italian parents, Iannucci studied at the University of Glasgow followed by the University of Oxford. Starting on BBC Scotland and BBC Radio 4, his early work with Chris Morris on the radio series On the Hour transferred to television as The Day Today.
David Lionel Baddiel is an English comedian, presenter, screenwriter, author and singer. He became known for his early work alongside Rob Newman in The Mary Whitehouse Experience and later for his comedy partnership with Frank Skinner.
Barry Leslie Norman was a British film critic, television presenter and journalist. He presented the BBC's cinema review programme, Film..., from 1972 to 1998.
John Richard Hopkins was an English film, stage, and television writer.
Tamsin Morwenna Banks is a British actress, comedian, writer, and producer. She appeared in the Channel 4 comedy sketch show Absolutely, and wrote, produced, and appeared in the British ensemble film The Announcement. She voices Mummy Pig, Madame Gazelle and Dr Hamster in the children's series Peppa Pig. She adapted Nick Hornby's novel Funny Girl for Sky Max and is a writer on Slow Horses for Apple TV+.
Peter Barnes was an English Olivier Award-winning playwright and screenwriter. His best known work is the play The Ruling Class, which was made into a 1972 film for which Peter O'Toole received an Oscar nomination.
Fantasy Football League was a British television comedy programme originally hosted by David Baddiel and Frank Skinner. It was inspired by the Fantasy Football phenomenon which started in the early 1990s and followed on from a BBC Radio 5 programme hosted by Dominik Diamond, although the radio and TV versions overlapped by several months. Three series were broadcast from 14 January 1994 to 10 May 1996. The show then moved to ITV for live specials on alternate nights throughout the 1998 World Cup and then again through Euro 2004.
An Englishman Abroad is a 1983 BBC television drama film based on the true story of a chance meeting of actress Coral Browne with Guy Burgess, a member of the Cambridge spy ring who spied for the Soviet Union while an officer at MI6. The production was written by Alan Bennett and directed by John Schlesinger. Browne stars as herself.
Film '71 – Film 2018 was a British film review television programme, which was usually broadcast on BBC One. The title of the show changed each year to incorporate the year of broadcast until its cancellation in December 2018.
Mark Kermode is an English film critic, musician, radio presenter, television presenter, author and podcaster. He is the co-presenter, with Ellen E. Jones, of the BBC Radio 4 programme Screenshot and co-presenter of the film-review podcast Kermode & Mayo's Take alongside long-time collaborator Simon Mayo. He is a regular contributor to The Observer, for which he was chief film critic between September 2013 and September 2023.
Thomas Anthony Hollander is a British actor who has gained success for his roles on stage and screen, winning BAFTA and two Screen Actors Guild Awards.
Peter Kosminsky is a British writer, director and producer. He has directed Hollywood movies such as White Oleander and television films like Warriors, The Government Inspector, The Promise, Wolf Hall and The State.
A Ghost Story for Christmas is a strand of annual British short television films originally broadcast on BBC One between 1971 and 1978, and revived sporadically by the BBC since 2005. With one exception, the original instalments were directed by Lawrence Gordon Clark and the films were all shot on 16 mm colour film. The remit behind the series was to provide a television adaptation of a classic ghost story, in line with the oral tradition of telling supernatural tales at Christmas.
"Balham, Gateway to the South" is a comedy sketch that parodies cinema travelogues by presenting the South London suburb of Balham as an exotic locale. It was written by Frank Muir and Denis Norden for the short-lived BBC radio series Third Division and featured in the second edition broadcast on the BBC Third Programme on 2 February 1949. The sketch's depiction of Balham as a faraway, desirable location contrasted with the real area during postwar austerity. One memorable part of the sketch is the pronunciation of Balham as "Bal-Ham" in an American accent, instead of the British pronunciation "Bal-um".
Peter Geoffrey Francis Jones was an English actor, screenwriter and broadcaster.
The Lady in the Van is a 2015 British comedy-drama film directed by Nicholas Hytner, and starring Maggie Smith and Alex Jennings, based on the memoir of the same name created by Alan Bennett.
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