Penelope Houston

Who is Penelope Houston?

Penelope Houston is a British film critic and journal editor. In 1947 she was the first editor of the short-lived film journal Sequence founded by Lindsay Anderson, Karel Reisz and Gavin Lambert at Oxford University, where she read English at Somerville College. From 1956 to 1990, she edited Sight & Sound, the journal of the British Film Institute, and was a regular contributor to the Monthly Film Bulletin for many years until the mid-1970s. She also had a stint as film critic for The Spectator, deputised as critic for The Times and for The Observer as C.A. Lejeune's deputy in 1957, and is also the author of a number of important books on cinema, including The Contemporary Cinema and Keepers of the Frame: Film Archives.