About me

I’m a Yorkshireman, born in the year we won the World Cup which I guess makes me pretty close to a fossil. I’ve been a writer specialising in film for more than 30 years and a lover of film all my life.

My career path started in regional print journalism with some regional TV thrown in, too. Then there was an intense period of freelance writing for a wide range of film magazines before I joined the-then National Museum of Photography, Film & Television, in Bradford, in late 1999 as Cinema Interpretation Manager. I was later appointed Head of Film Programming with responsibility for curating the Museum’s film offer and artistic director of Bradford International Film Festival.

I was in the job for almost 12 years, leaving in 2011 to follow the freelance road. Now I’m a partner with Reel Solutions working on an array of UK film festivals and with various venues including QUAD in Derby on their annual iDFest, later renamed Derby Film Festival. During my time at Bradford I also founded the sci-fi, fantasy and horror festival known as the Fantastic Films Weekend. When this was axed by the Museum in 2012 I decided to resurrect it under a new name – FANTASTIQ – and hold it in Derby at the QUAD for five years.

I also write books. My first An Actor and a Rare One – Peter Cushing as Sherlock Holmes was published by Scarecrow Press in 2001. That was followed by Beating the Devil – The Making of Night of the Demon in 2005, published by Tomahawk Press. Then there was Made in Yorkshire, published in 2008 by Guerilla Books. In 2013 I edited The Christmas Ghost Stories of Lawrence Gordon Clark for Spectral Press. 2014 saw Studies in the Horror Film: Tobe Hooper’s Salem’s Lot from Centipede Press and Under Milk Wood Revisited: The Wales of Dylan Thomas from Amberley Publishing. In 2016 I saw my seventh book published – FANTASTIQUE: Interviews with Horror, Sci-Fi & Fantasy Filmmakers (BearManor Media). At the Museum I compiled and edited three monographs (on Jack Cardiff, Om Puri and the Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan) and with Reel Solutions I have edited four more, on Eric Portman, Lawrence Gordon Clark (focusing on the man who created the BBC’s ‘ghost story for Christmas’ strand in the 1970s), Peter Cushing and Stanley Baker.

Latterly I’ve begun writing short fiction, picking up a baton I last carried some 25 years ago. My debut tale, ‘Flies’, appeared in The Eleventh Black Book of Horror published in 2015 by Mortbury Press. My second piece, ‘A&E’, appeared in Stories of the Dead: A Tribute to George A. Romero published in 2018 by EyeCue Productions. The Third BHF Book of Horror Stories (2020) contained ‘Raw’ and ‘Special Weapons Division’.

I was the film critic for The Yorkshire Post from 1995 until 2016, and from 2010 to 2015 I was a regular on BBC Radio Leeds as guest reviewer on Andrew Edwards’ show, presenting a fortnightly strand called Movie Monday. Latterly I’ve begun writing for long-running British magazine The Dark Side. I’m a member of The Critics’ Circle and The Guild of Regional Film Writers.

In September 2016 I began studying for an MA in English by Research at Sheffield Hallam University, receiving my Masters in 2018.

I’m married and the father of two splendid daughters. Being a Yorkshireman I live in Yorkshire. Where else…?

My entry on the Internet Movie Database

My entry on the Internet Speculative Fiction Database.