TOM CLEGG

4 Aug

(16 October 1934 – 24 July 2016)

The Lancashire-born director Tom Clegg initially worked for Granada Television as a camera operator. Moving to ABC TV he became a director and for most of his career worked in television directing high-profile series such as Special Branch, Regan (1974), the TV pilot that led him to direct The Sweeney with John Thaw and Denis Waterman, the Gerry Anderson sci-fi series Space 1999 and episodes of Minder, The Chinese Detective, The Professionals, Boon, Van der Valk, Bergerac, Between the Lines, Poirot and Rosemary and Thyme etc.

Probably his biggest contribution to British television was directing 16 feature-length TV action films based on the character of Sharpe, a soldier during the Napoleonic Wars, starring Sean Bean. Clegg made a few films for the cinema: Sweeney 2, the second spin-off from Sweeney, McVicar (1980), a relentlessly powerful study of villain John McVicar’s time in prison, with Roger Daltrey, G’Olé!, the official FIFA documentary on the 1982 World Cup, The Inside Man (1984), a Cold War thriller with Dennis Hopper and Any Man’s Death (1990), about a missing journalist in the African civil war, with John Savage. Clegg’s last work was on Sharpe’s Peril (2008), the final in the series about which he also made a documentary film.

MICHAEL DARVELL

Michael Darvell

Michael Darvell trained as a librarian at Watford and in Surrey before joining Ealing Libraries where he became Music Librarian for the borough. He edited Masthead, the magazine of the University of North London School of Librarianship, The Surrealist, the staff magazine of Surrey County Library, and contributed to the Assistant Librarian and London Librarian professional journals. A freelance film reviewer since 1970, he has written for Film, Films Illustrated, Film Review, Movie Maker and Radio Times, as well as editing Montage, the London film societies magazine, for ten years. A change of career saw him joining What’s On in London as Features Editor and he eventually stepped into the shoes of the late F. Maurice Speed (founding father of Film Review annual) as the magazine’s Editor. From 2007 to 2015, he was co-editor of the Film Review annual with Mansel Stimpson. As well as writing about films, Michael has reviewed theatre for The Stage newspaper, and has written about music theatre and cabaret for the Classical Source and Musical Theatre Review websites. He is also a former restaurant critic for the ViewLondon website. Michael has been a member of the London Film Critics’ Circle since 2005.

TOM CLEGG

BRIAN RIX

DAVID HUDDLESTON