Alexander Walker (critic)


Alexander Walker was a UK film critic who wrote for the London Evening Standard from 1960 to the end of his life. He wrote 20 books.

Life and career

Walker was born in Portadown, County Armagh in Northern Ireland, a commercial traveller's only son. He was educated at Queen's University, Belfast, the College of Europe in Bruges, Belgium and the University of Michigan, where he lectured in political philosophy for two years from 1952.
He worked for the Birmingham Post from 1953, where he was noticed by Godfrey Winn, who became a significant influence upon him as well as, later, Lord Beaverbrook and Lord Rothermere. The film critic of the London Evening Standard from 1960, he remained in the role until his death in 2003. His most extended work being a book trilogy on the history of the British film industry: Hollywood England, National Heroes and Icons in the Fire. In addition, he was the author of an Elizabeth Taylor biography, a history of the impact made on Hollywood by the rise of the talkies and a study of the work of Stanley Kubrick.

Ken Russell

Walker had a close relationship with Kubrick but was a fierce critic of the British director Ken Russell, referring to the director's visceral The Devils as being "a garish glossary of sado-masochism … a taste for visual sensation that makes scene after scene look like the masturbatory fantasies of a Roman Catholic boyhood." Having previously been a defender of Russell's early work for the BBC he was increasingly critical of Russell films of the 1970s, reviewing The Music Lovers he wrote: "This man must be stopped: bring me an elephant gun." In a television showdown between the two men in response to Walker's assessment of The Devils as "monstrously indecent", Russell reached over and hit him around the head with a rolled up newspaper copy of his own review. In later life, when asked about the incident and if he regretted it, Russell responded that he did regret it, "I wish it had been an iron bar."
Walker assembled a collection of more than 200 drawings and prints by modern artists, which were bequeathed to the British Museum after his death in 2003. In 1968, he was a member of the jury at the 18th Berlin International Film Festival.

Books