The prolific French film director Claude Chabrol has been making films for more than half a century and is still making episodes for television dramas. As one of the prime movers in the French New Wave, along with Godard and Truffaut in the 1950s, he moved on to psychological thrillers including classics such as La Femme Infidèle (1969) and Le Boucher (1970), which led to him being hailed as the French Hitchcock. There could not have been a finer compliment; as a former film critic he had been a fan of Hitchcock for years, even co-writing the first serious study of “the master of suspense”. RGT
Birthdays today
Jeff Beck, guitarist, 66; Quentin Bell, public relations consultant, 66; Anita Desai, novelist, 73; Mick Fleetwood, drummer, 68; Sir Ian Gainsford, Dean of King’s College School of Medicine and Dentistry, King’s College London, 1988-97, 80; William Gaskill, theatre director, 80; Stuart Housden, director, RSPB Scotland, 56; Professor Betty Jackson, fashion designer, 61; Stephen Jefferies, senior principal dancer with the Royal Ballet, 1979-95, and artistic director, Hong Kong Ballet, 1996-2006, 59; Professor John R. Postgate, microbiologist, 88.