Andrew Birkin

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Andrew Birkin
Born
Andrew Timothy Birkin

(1945-12-09) 9 December 1945 (age 78)
London, England
Occupation(s)Director, screenwriter
Years active1972–present
SpouseKaren Birkin
Children5, including David and Anno Birkin
Parents
Relatives

Andrew Timothy Birkin (born 9 December 1945) is an English screenwriter and director.

Early life and education

Birkin is the only son of Lieutenant-Commander David Leslie Birkin (grandson of the lace manufacturer and railway director Sir Thomas Birkin, 1st Baronet) and his wife, actress Judy Campbell. One of his sisters was actress and singer Jane Birkin.[1] Birkin was educated at Elstree School and Harrow School. At the former he was remembered by a teacher as being "one of the naughtiest boys ever to have passed through Elstree"[2] and his record at Harrow was no better.

Career

He left school at the age of 17 to work as a mail boy at

Namib Desert.[3][4][8]

After working as First Assistant Director to

2007 MOJO Awards, and was described as the "Citizen Kane of rock musicals" by BBC film critic Mark Kermode [12]), and an unmade adaptation of Albert Speer's Inside the Third Reich for Puttnam and Paramount, which involved a year's consultation with Speer in 1971/72.[11][13]

Having worked on an adaptation of

Writers Guild of Great Britain and the Royal Television Society. The critic Sean Day-Lewis wrote in The Daily Telegraph, 'I doubt if biography has ever been better televised than in this sensitive and beautifully crafted masterpiece, and I am quite sure such excellence is beyond any other television service in the world.'[14] The BBC's Director-General Sir Ian Trethowan called it 'a landmark in television drama'.[15] Birkin has also written a biographical account of Barrie's relationship with the Llewelyn Davies family, J. M. Barrie and the Lost Boys (1979; 2nd edition 2003), described by The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature as 'the most candid and perceptive biography to have been written of Barrie'.[16] Birkin also hosts Barrie's official website on behalf of the Great Ormond Street Hospital, to whom he donated his Barrie/Llewelyn Davies/Peter Pan archive in 2004.[17]

In 1980, Birkin won a

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
.

In 2013, Taschen published a selection of his photographs and an autobiographical essay in Jane & Serge: A Family Album. In 2017 he wrote an adaptation of Peter Pan for Radio France.

Personal life

Birkin has four sons and a daughter. David Birkin (born 1977), artist and photographer, is his eldest son, followed by Anno Birkin (1980–2001), poet and musician, and Ned Birkin (born 1985), whom Birkin directed in The Cement Garden. He is married to artist Karen Birkin, with whom he has a daughter, Emily Jane (born December 2008) and a son, Thomas Bernie (born April 2011). Two of his nieces are actresses: Charlotte Gainsbourg, who also appeared in The Cement Garden, and Lou Doillon.

He lives on the Llŷn Peninsula in North Wales.

Birkin is a trustee of the children's arts charity Anno's Africa.

Filmography

Books

  • Author, J. M. Barrie and the Lost Boys (Constable, 1979; Revised Edition: Yale University Press, 2003)
  • Author, Jane & Serge: A Family Album (Taschen, 2013)

References

  1. ^ Burke's Peerage, Baronetage and Knightage, 107th edition, vol. 1, ed. Charles Mosley, Burke's Peerage Ltd, 2003, p. 321
  2. ISSN 0307-1235
    . Retrieved 6 November 2019.
  3. ^ a b Dan Richter, Moonwatcher's Memoir: A Diary of 2001: A Space of Odyssey (2002)
  4. ^
    ISBN 978-1854103659
    .
  5. ^ Michel Ciment, Kubrick (1999)
  6. ^ a b Rolf Thissen, Stanley Kubrick: Der Regisseur als Architekt (1999)
  7. ^ Michael Benson, Space Odyssey (2018)
  8. ^ John Baxter, Stanley Kubrick: A Biography (1997)
  9. ^ John Baxter, Stanley Kubrick: A Biography (1997)
  10. ^ Deutsches Filmmuseum (Ed.): Stanley Kubrick (2004)
  11. ^ a b Andrew Yule, Fast Fade: David Puttnam, Columbia Pictures, and the Battle For Hollywood (1989)
  12. ^ Mark Kermode (31 August 2012). "Blogs – Kermode Uncut – Film Club – Slade in Flame"
  13. ^ James Park, Learning to Dream: The New British Cinema, 1984
  14. ^ The Daily Telegraph, 30 October 1978
  15. ^ The Guardian, 6 November 1978
  16. ^ Humphrey Carpenter & Mari Prichard, The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature, 1984
  17. ^ Sotheby's Catalogue, English Literature, including the Archive of J. M. Barrie and The Lost Boys, 16 December 2004
  18. ^ "Berlinale: 1993 Prize Winners". berlinale.de. Retrieved 30 May 2011.
  19. ^ Time Out, 20–27 October 1993

External links

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