Peter Bradshaw chats with his predecessor Derek Malcolm about routes into the profession, screenings and social media
From 1999 until the present, I have been the chief film critic of the Guardian; before that it was the legendary Derek Malcolm who held the job from the early 70s, and now at the age of 89, is far from retired, regularly attending festivals including Venice and Goa, and contributing to the Sky Arts TV show Discovering Film.
How has the job of film critic changed between his day and mine? I went down for lunch and a comparison of notes with Derek at his house in Deal, Kent, where he lives with his wife, the historian and journalist Sarah Gristwood.
How did Derek get into the film critic business? “I was on the Gloucestershire Echo and wrote to Brian Redhead, who was the Manchester Guardian’s arts editor, asking if I could write about the Cheltenham literary festival. He said I might send my piece in and it was published, and he told me to come and see him. I knew Redhead was a socialist and if he knew I was at Eton and Oxford I would never get a job. So he asked me where I went to school and I said: ‘Somewhere near Slough.’ I ended up as a designer, and then called down to London where I was the late-night sub and the only one who could read the reviews by Neville Cardus [the renowned music critic and cricket correspondent] who submitted his copy in longhand. I became the letters editor, and – because I had been an amateur jockey in the 1960s — the racing correspondent.
“I was also the deputy drama critic to Philip Hope-Wallace, who took great delight in sending me to review Little Malcolm and His Struggle Against the Eunuchs. I became the film critic because the editor fired the existing critic, Richard Roud, for writing a one-word review of The Sound of Music — he just wrote ‘No’. Just that.”
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