Obituary Ham & High June 5 2008

Newspaper critic who loved life in beloved Highgate: Award winning writer felt on top of world in village
A journalist and critic from Highgate who had a distinguished career spanning 50 years has died at the age of 83.
Alan Brien, who was once married to feminist writer Jill Tweedie, penned reviews and columns for publications including the New Statesman, the Spectator, the Sunday Times and Punch. While writing on politics for the Sunday Pictorial, he became the first drama critic of the Sunday Telegraph and was twice awarded the Critic of the Year title.
He lived with his fourth wife, the writer Jane Hill, at their home in one of the most ancient cottages in the village in the Highgate Bowl.
A great walker, he loved Highgate for its proximity to open spaces and because so many friends from his career, including the Observer's film critic Philip French, live nearby.
"He always walked on the heath with our lurcher Solly", said Ms Hill. "He loved Highgate Wood and Queen's Wood". He walked all the way down to Soho for his theatre reviews and we would sometimes walk up to Finsbury Park and have a cup of tea and a biscuit together."
A regular reader of the Ham & High, Mr Brien featured in our Who's Who column in March 2002, where he said he enjoyed looking out of his window because he could see the tops of trees which made him feel like he was on top of the world.
His only complaints were that the village needed a nice arts cinema and the terrible steepness of the hill. "I sometimes see people hanging onto lampposts to pause for breath as they walk up it," he said at the time.
He was born in Sunderland on March 12, 1925, the fifth and last child of a tramways inspector. From his local grammar school he went on to read English at Jesus College, Oxford, where he was a contemporary of rival theatre critic Ken Tynan. He joined the RAF in 1943 and as an air gunner he took part in many sorties. Had he not been grounded by the flu he would have been involved in the Dresden raid.
By the mid 1950s he was the Observer's television reviewer and later became its film critic. He transferred to the Evening Standard, which sent him to New York.
But his main ambition was to write about the theatre, a role he took at the Spectator from 1958 to 1961. In 1967 he was recruited by the new editor of The Sunday Times, Harold Evans, who sent him to report in Moscow and Saigon.
"He just loved life," said Ms Hill. "He didn't care about possessions - he cared about food and friends, eating and drinking, politics and above all books.
"He had very devoted friends who admired him immensely. Even if he was critical of them it was in a way they found acceptable because they always trusted his judgement. People cared about him.
"He loved fires - the cottage was very archaic when we moved in in 2001 but nothing much was done to it. One thing he did do was to open up all the fireplaces - we always had open wood and coal fires.
"He was extremely nice to women. When we first met we just talked and laughed all the time. He was one of the most articulate people I have ever known and he was very funny.
"He was very loyal and was an astonishingly good writer. He did care about Highgate Village and about preserving it but he wasn't against new things. He was always open and thought the place needed to grow."
Mr Brien died on May 23 after a battle with Lewy Body disease. He is survived by his wife, his five children and three stepchildren.

Tan Parsons