For some years, I was UK correspondent for Film Journal International, the distinguished monthly published in New York. I have written about cinema for many other titles including The Times and Time Out. As a collector to an obsessive-compulsive degree, I have amassed a library (running to tens of thousands of items) of books and recorded television programmes about film, as well as recordings of movies of all kinds – from Griffith to Greenaway, from Reiniger to Reiner, from Powell & Pressburger to the Brothers Quay, from Fred Wiseman to Len Wiseman.