UK director Michael Winner dies at 77

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Michael Winner

British film director and food critic Michael Winner, who last month auctioned his collection of original book illustrations for over £1.1 million, has died, his wife Geraldine Winner said in a statement on Monday. He was 77 years old.

“Michael was a wonderful man, brilliant, funny and generous. A light has gone out in my life,” Geraldine Winner said in a statement. The couple had known each other for over 50 years, but got married only in 2011.
Last year, Michael Winner had revealed that he had been given 18 months to live by his doctors.
Born in Hampstead, London, in 1935, Winner produced and directed over 30 films, including the Death Wish series set in the slums of New York and Los Angeles, The Jokers, The Nighcomers and A Chorus of Disapproval.
The Cambridge University graduate had started his career as a journalist and film critic and he again turned to writing as he wrote a weekly column about food and restaurants in the Sunday Times, called Winner’s Dinners. He was known for his critical and acerbic reviews.
Winner, who lived in a historic 46-roomed Victorian mansion in London with his wife, has left it to the nation as a museum.
Winner was a close friend of Sir Michael Caine, who also was a witness at his wedding in London. passionate collector of illustrations and drawings and furniture, Winner last year described the beginning of his love for collecting drawings.
“It was many years ago that I went into an old bookshop in the Charing Cross Road; there I saw two paintings by Arthur Rackham which I found utterly memorable. They had a quality which was unique. From then on I became a collector: I was hooked.” No details of the funeral have been revealed as yet.