PETER DUFFELL

(10 July 1922 - 12 December 2017)

The British film director and writer Peter Duffell, who has died aged 95, worked mainly in television. Nonetheless, he did direct the occasional film. From 1967 he was noted for his helming of such TV series as The Avengers, Man in a Suitcase, The Far Pavilions, Inspector Morse, etc, and several one-off TV movies. For the cinema he began working on Merton Park Studio’s second features, including the Edgar Wallace mysteries, and The Scales of Justice and Scotland Yard series. The House That Dripped Blood (1971) was his first main feature, an Amicus anthology of four horror stories with Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. Duffell then both co-wrote and directed England Made Me, based on the Graham Greene novel, with Peter Finch and Michael York. Inside Out was a comedy thriller with Telly Savalas. Experience Preferred… But Not Essential was co-written by Jack Rosenthal and produced by David Puttnam. King of the Wind (1990), a period adventure about a horse, starred Richard Harris and Glenda Jackson and was Duffell’s last feature. He wrote and directed his own thriller, Some Other Spring, for television in 1991 and retired after directing episodes of The Bill in 1996. He won a Bafta award for Stephen Poliakoff’s Caught on a Train (1980) with Peggy Ashcroft. Peter Duffell married three times: his third wife was Rosslyn Audrey Cliffe and he fathered a child with his second wife. His autobiography Playing Piano in a Brothel: Memoirs of a Film Director, had an introduction by Christopher Lee who called Duffell “Britain’s most underrated director."

MICHAEL DARVELL