I had the exciting if rather daunting privilege of following Margaret Hinxman as film critic of the Daily Mail after she retired in the early 1980s. I had loved reading Maggie’s reviews which combined incisive opinions with a genuine passion for cinema.
Sadly, my tenure, which had come with Maggie’s generous blessing, proved to be fairly short-lived, but in subsequent reviewing stints for other newspapers and magazines across the next 30 years, I always tried to emulate those virtues which had helped make her a much-admired doyenne of the profession.
