Influential British film critic and scholar Robin Wood died on 18 December, 2009, aged 78.

He was known for his examinations of great directors such as Alfred Hitchcock , Howard Hawks and Ingmar Bergman , and later in his career, for books on the links between cinema and politics.

He was particularly noted for applying psychological techniques to characters and also for asserting his status as a gay film critic.

He was born in Richmond, London, in 23 February, 1931. He graduated from Jesus College, Cambridge in 1953 and began teaching at various schools in England, Sweden and France.

He began contributing to the journal Movie in 1962 and published his first book, Hitchcock's Films, in 1962. In the following years he had academic positions at the Queen's University in Ontario, Canada, the University of Warwick and finally York University in Toronto where he taught as professor of film studies until retirement in the 1990s.

While working in Canada he helped found the magazine CineAction based at the university.

Many of his books are still popular texts for film students and several of his students have gone on to be well known in the academic field or film industry itself.