Penelope Houston obituary

Writer who edited the BFI’s Sight & Sound magazine for 35 years

Penelope Houston, editor of the British Film Institute’s magazine Sight & Sound for 35 years, who has died aged 88, was steeped in cinema past and present.

She was also an inveterate golfer and a passionate racegoer. Horses, she once said, were on the whole rather brighter than a good many humans she knew; and to go with her to a race meeting was a small education in itself. She knew her stuff, but bet minuscule amounts as if half-ashamed of wasting the BFI’s money.