[1] Shipman was born in Norwich, Norfolk,[1] After a period in London, the family was evacuated in 1940 to Pensilva, Cornwall.
He did his national service in the RAF, partly in Singapore, then briefly attended Merton College, Oxford.
He also worked as a lecturer, journalist and film consultant, and from 1986 until his death wrote obituaries for The Independent newspaper.
He was never [a] film critic for a national newspaper, and was generally not seen by the cinema establishment as a heavyweight; but in the 10 books he wrote, most notably the three volumes that made up The Great Movie Stars and the two-volume The Story of Cinema, he exerted an influence no other writer on film has matched.
More widely read than Pauline Kael, more authoritative and more knowledgeable than Leslie Halliwell, he always seemed in touch with the audiences for whom he wrote, and they appreciated his strongly held if iconoclastic views and the fact he was always his own man.