Peter Bradshaw | |
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.jpg) Bradshaw in 2013 | |
| Born | Peter Nicholas Bradshaw (1962-06-19)19 June 1962 (age 62) |
| 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 atThe Guardian since 1999, and is a contributing editor atEsquire.
Bradshaw was educated atHaberdashers' Aske's Boys' School inHertfordshire[1] and studied English atPembroke College, Cambridge, where he was president of theCambridge Footlights. He was awarded aBachelor of Arts degree in 1984, followed by postgraduate research in theEarly Modern period in which he studied withLisa Jardine andAnne Barton. He received hisPhD in 1989.[2]
In the 1990s, Bradshaw was employed by theEvening Standard as a columnist, and during the 1997 general election campaign, editorMax Hastings asked him to write a series ofparodic diary entries purporting to be written by the Conservative MP and historianAlan 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 asatire sued its author. Bradshaw was not put into the witness box by his QCPeter Prescott, and the judgeGavin 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 forThe Guardian, writing a weekly review column every Friday for the paper's Film&Music section. He is a regular guest reviewer on theFilm... programme broadcast onBBC One. He was on theUn Certain Regard jury for2011 Cannes Film Festival.
He wrote and performed aBBC Radio 4 programme entitledFor 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 1970sCambridgeshire. His bittersweet short storyReunion, first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 21 October 2016, was narrated byTom 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, entitledNeighbours Of Zero, first broadcast on Radio 4 on 17 November 2017, was narrated byDaniel Mays.[6] Bradshaw's storySenior Moment, first broadcast on Radio 4 on 22 May 2020, was narrated byMichael Maloney.[7] Bradshaw co-wrote and acted inDavid Baddiel's sitcomBaddiel's Syndrome, first aired onSky One.[8]
In a 2022Sight & Sound poll of cinema's greatest films, Bradshaw indicated that his ten favourites are:[9]
Bradshaw has been shortlisted four times forThe Press Awards in the Critic of the Year category: 2001,[10] 2007,[11] 2012[12] and 2013[13] when he was "Highly Commended".[14]
At the2024 Cannes Film Festival, Bradshaw was presented with the Annual Achievement Award for an International Film Critic by the Arab Cinema Center.[15]
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