As an undergraduate at Trinity College, Cambridge, a young Michael Birkett indulged his passion for the arts. He staged student shows and became a fully fledged member of the university’s film society. Though his father Norman (later Lord) Birkett was a prominent advocate who served as the alternate British judge at the Nuremberg trials, he never considered following in his footsteps, intent instead on pursuing a career in showbusiness.
Born in London in 1929, he attended Stowe School before reading English at Cambridge. After graduating he joined Ealing Studios, working as an assistant director and an associate producer, later focusing on his own films. While training, one of his first production projects was the classic 1955 comedy The Ladykillers, with Alec Guinness and Peter Sellers.
He produced film adaptations in the 1960s of A Midsummer Night’s Dream — with Judi Dench and Helen Mirren — and later King Lear, starring Paul Scofield. When a radical production of Harold Pinter’s The Caretaker came close to collapsing, he managed to persuade figures including Noël Coward, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor to contribute funds — the latter two he invited for lunch at the Connaught to discuss the matter.
He was appointed, in 1975, as deputy director of the National Theatre by Peter Hall, a post he held for two years. For much of the 1980s he served as director of recreation and the arts at the Greater London Council.
Birkett married Junia Crawford in 1960, but 13 years later she died of a brain tumour. In 1978 he married Gloria Taylor, a model and theatrical press agent, and adopted her son, Siddig, who is now an actor. Together they also had a son, Thomas, who is a photographer. His second wife died of cancer in 2001.
Having succeeded to the peerage in 1962 on his father’s death, Birkett was active in the House of Lords as a cross-bencher. An avid piano player who enjoyed making music almost as much as he did films, he co-created the Royal Philharmonic Society’s annual music awards in 1989.
His warmth and geniality were perhaps best summed up by Michael Blakemore, the actor and former associate director of the National Theatre. Birkett was, he said, “impossible to dislike”.
Lord Birkett, film producer and arts enthusiast, was born on October 22, 1929. He died on April 3, 2015, aged 85
