Trivia

Respected film critic, a position which she held from 1939 right up until her death in 1995.

At press screenings, she usually sat apart from other critics and as near to the screen as possible, so as to maximize her concentration. It was also commonplace for her to see films she had already seen at such screenings several times more with paying audiences, often before writing about them.

In 1960, she wrote an extremely negative review of Michael Powell's film, Le voyeur (1960), which she called an "essentially vicious film". About a third of a century later, by which time Powell had died and she was herself near death, she said on television that she had changed her mind and now regarded the film as a masterpiece, adding that, if she ever met Michael Powell in another world, she would make a point of apologizing to him.

Aunt to Ivor Powell - producer on Alien, le 8ème passager (1979), Blade Runner (1982) and Les Duellistes (1977).

Loved the country of Greece and wrote two books about it.

Well known to BBC radio audiences for her work on the program, "My Word".

She was awarded the CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in the 1974 Queen's New Year Honours List for her services to film journalism.

She was called as a witness in the famous 1960 trial where Penguin Books, the famous publishing house, was prosecuted for publishing an unexpurgated version of D.H. Lawrence's novel "Lady Chatterley's Lover". In a landmark decision, the book was found to be not obscene and was thus published uncut for the first time, well over thirty years after it was written.