Denis Forman
1990 Judge (Chair)
- Prizes judged
Denis Forman was the television executive responsible for bringing the 1977 Booker Prize winner Paul Scott’s Raj Quartet to the small screen as The Jewel in the Crown.
Forman, who died in 2013, lost a leg at Monte Cassino during the war when he was hit by a smoke cannister. He went on to become a newspaper film critic, director of the British Film Institute and chairman of Granada Television. Among his other passions were Mozart and, his monopedism notwithstanding, Scottish country dancing. Forman fell out with his father, a Presbyterian minister, when he was told that God foresaw everything and Forman replied: ‘Well, I have a surprise for him, I don’t believe in him.’ He would remain an enthusiastic atheist.