The film director Richard Lester is best known for the two Beatles films he made more than 45 years ago, A Hard Day’s Night (1964) and Help! (1965). He viewed the films for the first time in years and told the AV Club that he thought the presentation of the way the Beatles were in 1965 “seemed accurate and fresh . . . and had that sense of fun and irony that a vaguely surrealist piece can produce, where the Beatles were not only themselves, they were outside themselves, looking in in an ironic way”. He retired from film-making in 1989. Richard Lester is 78 today. RGT
Birthdays today
Julian Barnes, writer, 64; Nina Bawden, novelist, 85; Jenson Button, racing driver, 30; Michael Crawford, actor and singer, 68; Bernard Dunstan, painter, 90; Amanda Holden, musician and writer, 62; Sir Alex Jarratt, chairman, Smiths Industries, 1985-91, 86; Professor Christopher Marshall, cancer researcher, 61; Dolly Parton, country music singer and actress, 64; Javier P?rez de Cu?llar, Secretary-General, United Nations, 1982-91, 90; Sir Simon Rattle, conductor, 55.