His apartment was stuffed from floor to ceiling with books for which there was no more shelf-room and paintings he had not yet found time or space to hang. He was an inveterate traveller, always the first to fly to a new museum or a recently opened ski-slope. He was an entertaining host, an immaculate guest, and the dear friend of too many of us to count.Sheridan MorleyAlexander Walker’s best film biographies tended to be those about its icons, writes Ion Trewin – Vivien Leigh, Peter Sellers, Rex Harrison, Audrey Hepburn. Only a few weeks ago he was talking to me, his publisher, about an early delivery date for the third, long-awaited volume of his history of the contemporary film industry in Britain.He had decided to call the book Icons in the Fire with a subtitle that summed up his feelings: “The Decline and Fall of Almost Everybody in the British Film Industry”.

The earlier volumes, Hollywood England (1974, covering the 1960s) and National Heroes (1985: 1970s and early 1980s), were upbeat, but not so the new book. In his proposal, he wrote of the period from 1984: A once thriving, often envied and socially relevant entertainment industry was turned into a chaos of competitive and incompatible elements. Once great film corporations (Thorn-EMI, Rank, Goldcrest, Palace Pictures, PolyGram Filmed Entertainment) crashed under the weight of their own hubris, greed, incompetence or sheer bad luck.He was particularly critical of the past eight years when, as he put it, endless National Lottery money was fed into the production machine in financially prodigal, but artistically dubious and usually commercially disappointing initiatives until the “public benefit” was almost forgotten in the political attempt to impose a bureaucratic pattern of control on an entrepreneurial structure of risk capital.Walker’s knowledge of film came from both sides of the screen. He had no inhibitions about getting to know film-makers – actors, directors, producers – and, even though he was always honest in print about their work, few refused to talk to him. The notoriously secretive Stanley Kubrick even allowed him sufficient access for two hugely informative books, Stanley Kubrick Directs (1971) and Stanley Kubrick, Director (1999: substantially expanding its predecessor).Such trust extended to actors. The family of Peter Sellers authorised Alex to write the first major biography (Peter Sellers, 1981). After the sad early death of the actress Rachel Roberts, her executors asked him to edit her journals (No Bells on Sunday, 1984), which included an account of her difficult marriage to the much-married and egocentric Rex Harrison.

After his death Harrison became a Walker subject under the all too accurate title Fatal Charm (1992).But it was his last full biography, of Audrey Hepburn, that gave Alex Walker his greatest success. The book began in the weeks after Hepburn’s death as an illustrated essay, but the more Walker dug into Hepburn’s background the more fascinated he became. Audrey: her real story (1994) has gone into several editions, each with additional information, the most recent including an interview with Hepburn’s stepmother, who had previously proved elusive.Alex was never less than generous to those who sought his help. When newly appointed film critic of the Evening Standard in 1960 he took me to Pinewood Studios for the day, introducing me (in my teens) to Peter Finch and the film producer Betty Box among others. Only a few weeks ago he talked at length and valuably to John Coldstream, who is currently at work on the authorised life of Dirk Bogarde.Stepping into London life from Hollywood three summers ago, writes Steven Gaydos, I knew virtually nothing about Alexander Walker and his various crusades, clever and quixotic, wise and ill-advised.As the executive editor of Variety, I think I provided at least an imaginary line to the lost Hollywood showbiz/art/glamour that Walker revered and whose loss we both lamented So we began our lunches.

Seeing him as a maverick critic, a professional curmudgeon who loved to smite the smug and provide solace to foreign-language film-makers, I was an instant fan of the man and his oeuvre.Did I know how many powerful people in the London film community detested him? Of course Did I agree with everything he wrote? Of course not. But he knew more about film (of every variety) and I believe had more pure love for cinema than can be found in almost any of the film pros of Soho.I am Catholic He was most fervently not a follower of my Pope. Or my Peckinpah, who remains at the top of my list of American film-makers and near the bottom of Alex’s Did any of that matter? No. Just the films, the discussions, the conspiratorial glee of entertainment journalists who think they might perhaps have a story to bedevil one more haughty film exec or arts bureaucrat.Alex couldn’t attend the Karlovy Vary Film Festival in early July and now I know why. His piece in the Evening Standard from last year’s KV Fest remains the single best explanation of both the Fest and Alex Walker. It celebrated young people embracing non-mainstream films and Alex passionately proclaimed this hunger for alternative cinema as the “generational change” that heralded a better world for film lovers..