John Russell Taylor, who has died aged 90, was a critic, biographer and cultural historian whose work helped to shape the understanding of theatre and cinema in postwar Britain.
As a theatre, film and art critic for the Times for more than four decades – and the author of 40 books – he introduced readers to new movements, actors and directors with a clarity of style that brought intellectual weight without losing accessibility. He also became Alfred Hitchcock’s authorised biographer, producing in 1978 Hitch: The Life and Times of Alfred Hitchcock, a book that opened up the master of suspense to general readers and scholars alike.
The biography was notable for being written with the director’s full cooperation, an unusual privilege. The Times’s film critic since 1962, John moved to Los Angeles in the early 1970s. After he had spent six months “auditioning” for the role, which involved weekly lunches in Hitch’s office at Universal Studios, the director casually offered him the job of chief chronicler.
He spent several years interviewing Hitchcock and many of his collaborators, capturing the film-maker in his later years as he reflected on a long career.
Their shared appreciation for British art, such as the Stations of the Cross at Westminster Cathedral, along with their love for film and theatre, led Hitchcock to see him as the son he never had. “I was the right age and I was British,” John said. “And as Cary Grant once said to me, at least I knew what liquorice allsorts were!”
I came to know John while researching my own books on Hitchcock, including the forthcoming A Century of Hitchcock, which devotes a chapter to John’s working relationship with Hitch during the writing of his biography. He was always generous with his time; he had little patience for exaggeration or myth-making, seeing himself as a scholar rather than a hagiographer; preferring instead to reconstruct the record from documents and from what people had actually said and done.
The biography was published two years before Hitchcock’s death. In later years, John spoke out in his subject’s defence after the actor Tippi Hedren alleged, in 2016, that Hitchcock had subjected her to harassment and controlling behaviour during the making of The Birds (1963) and Marnie (1964): “In a way I don’t blame Hedren, who I got to know when I was researching my book. She is, I would guess, elaborating memories she feels bitter about but, as Hitchcock’s friend, I resent the way her story has changed over the years,” John said. He had first met Hedren in 1966 on the Pinewood set of A Countess from Hong Kong. At that time, according to John, she had little but praise for Hitchcock, who, she said, had given her an incomparable education in film.
Born in Dover, Kent, John was the son of Arthur Taylor, a customs officer, and Kathleen (nee Picker), a teacher. Educated at Dover grammar school, he won a place at Jesus College, Cambridge, to study English, graduating with a first-class degree in 1960. He continued his studies for two years at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, in art nouveau book design.
John first wrote for the Times in the early 60s, quickly establishing himself as a critic attuned to the shifts in British theatre during a decade of innovation. He reviewed plays by John Osborne, Joe Orton, Harold Pinter and later Tom Stoppard, with a sensitivity to how language and staging reflected the broader culture. In 1962, he published Anger and After, one of the first critical surveys of the “new wave” of British playwrights. It became a standard text for students and was reprinted in several editions. His Penguin Dictionary of the Theatre was published in 1966.
Besides theatre, he wrote extensively on film, art and literature. For the Times Literary Supplement and other publications, he reviewed novelists from Evelyn Waugh to Angela Carter. His book The Rise and Fall of the Well-Made Play (1967) explored the importance of stagecraft, while Cinema Eye, Cinema Ear (1964) examined the language of film at a time when academic film studies were hardly established in Britain.
Later, he authored works on impressionism and hyperrealism, as well as individual artists including Claude Monet and Cyril Mann, focusing on how different movements intersected across various media. He was art critic of the Times from 1978 to 2005.
John’s Hitchcock biography was his most prominent work. It received praise for its clarity and for integrating available records from the director’s firsthand sources. He then published further books on Hollywood, including studies of Ingrid Bergman (1983), Alec Guinness (1984), Vivien Leigh (1984) and Orson Welles (1986).
During his period in Los Angeles, where he lived with the artist Nick Cann from 1972 to 1978, he wrote extensively about American cinema and taught at the University of Southern California. He also contributed to film festivals, curated retrospectives and delivered public talks. His extensive knowledge, covering both British stage traditions and Hollywood film history, made him a respected link between the two.
John wore his learning lightly. In person he was genial, modest and often amused by the grand claims made for critics. He was an enthusiastic art collector, and I last saw him in 2024 during a photoshoot for the Guardian focusing on his collection of Salvador Dalí storyboards, which he had bought at a yard sale for $50 in LA.
John entered into a civil partnership in 2006 with the artist and designer Ying Yeung Li, who survives him.
• John Russell Taylor, journalist and biographer, born 19 June 1935; died 18 August 2025
