Former Merton College, Oxford bar steward and college football and cricket stalwart, Parkinson is now a leading authority on the history of cinema and foreign-language films.
He is a Contributing Editor at Empire magazine and associate editor of the Radio Times Guide to Films (3/e, BBC Consumer Publishing, 2003)- for which he is the majority contributor. He also reviews films for Empire, the Radio Times, the Oxford Times and MovieMail magazine; has written for Sight & Sound, Q, GQ and Heat; and compiles the Festivals and Seasons page on the BBCi website. In addition to a weekly review slot on BBC Radio Oxford and BBC Radio Berkshire, he also produces occasional specials on film and popular entertainment for BBC local radio.
Publications include The Bloomsbury Good Movie Guide (Bloomsbury, 1990), Mornings in the Dark: The Graham Greene Film Reader (ed. Applause Cinema & Theatre Book Publishers, 1994), Pinkerton Inks and the Case of the Pigeon's Pyjamas (illustrator - Guy Parker Rees OUP, 1994), The Young Oxford Book of the Cinema (OUP, 1995), The History of Film (Thames and Hudson, 1995), The Young Oxford Book of the Movies (OUP, 1997) and Oxford at the Movies (P.Inks Books, 2003). He has also contributed to several other publications, including the Dictionary of National Biography and the Oxford English Dictionary. Among his current projects is an encyclopedia of world cinema for the British Film Institute.
Parkinson was also one of the founder members of PEST, retaining the title of its lifelong president.
