John Peter, who has died aged 81, was drama critic of the Sunday Times from 1984 to 2003 and an admired colleague and friend. But what was truly extraordinary about him was his background as a Hungarian refugee who became a devoted anglophile.
I first came across John at Oxford University in the late 1950s, when people pointed him out to me with a kind of awe as someone who, within nine months of arriving in England not speaking a word of the language, had mastered it sufficiently to gain admission as a student at Campion Hall.
Over the years I pieced together bits of his life story. He told me that his father, Andras, had been killed in 1944 by Hungarian Nazis because of his Jewish ancestry, and that the theatre was in his blood since his mother, Veronica, had been an actor. He was also distantly related to the film star Bela Lugosi, who had fled Hungary in 1919 and become famous as Count Dracula on screen. In John’s case, he and his mother left Budapest precipitately during the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, travelling to Austria hidden in a hay cart and eventually reaching a refugee camp in Wiltshire before settling in London’s East End.
John, whose non-anglicised name was Janos, got an English degree at Oxford and did postgraduate work on Renaissance drama, but our paths really crossed when we both found ourselves writing theatre reviews for the Times in the mid-60s. The arts editor, John Lawrence, was a great patron of young critics but puckishly encouraged a competitive spirit. I told John that whenever I went into the office, Mr Lawrence would cheerfully greet me by saying “Isn’t Mr Peter writing well at the moment?” John told me he would be met by similar praise devoted to me. The result would be to spur us both on to greater efforts.
It was actually Mr Lawrence who in 1967 recommended John to the Sunday Times, where he assisted Jack Lambert, the paper’s literary and arts editor, and wrote regular reviews before becoming chief theatre critic in 1984.
John was an erudite, perceptive and often brilliant critic whose work was informed by a profound knowledge of European culture. He also achieved something of lasting value by setting up in 1990 the annual Ian Charleson awards, co-sponsored by the National Theatre, to honour classical performances by young actors.
But my abiding memory of him is of someone whose adopted Englishness became like a second skin and who had a mercurial, even whimsical, sense of humour: he would always greet me with a sign of the cross, as if endowing me with a papal blessing.
He was a dear man and one whom the literary critic George Steiner told a friend of mine that he admired more than anyone for his total mastery of English language and culture. John’s memoir, How I Became an Englishman, is to be published later this year.
After the death of his first wife, Linette Perry, in 2013 John married the novelist Judith Burnley, who survives him. He died in Denville Hall in Northwood, Middlesex, a care home for members of the entertainment industry, and was the first critic ever to be admitted to live within its walls.
