Andrew Willsmore, documentary editor behind 14 Days in May, dies aged 74
Andrew Willsmore, the British documentary film editor whose credits included 14 Days in May and The Duty Men, has died aged 74 after a long illness.
Andrew Willsmore, the British documentary film editor whose work shaped some of the most acclaimed factual programmes of the 1980s and beyond, has died aged 74 after a long illness, Broadcast reports.
Willsmore’s lengthy career included the BBC’s acclaimed 14 Days in May and The Duty Men, both from 1987, for which he won a Bafta Craft award for his editing work. Executive producer Neil Grant described him as a double Bafta winner with an extraordinary body of work.
He worked extensively across strands such as Inside Story, 40 Minutes and Dispatches, and on more popular fare including Chris Terrill’s The Cruise, which attracted vast ratings and helped launch the career of Jane McDonald.
Anthropologist and filmmaker Terrill, who made more than 40 films with Willsmore including the six-part Beloved Country, cut on location in South Africa, described him as “a great editor but an even greater friend to those he worked with”.
Veteran documentary producer Richard Denton said Willsmore was “a wonderful friend whom we will all miss”, while documentary film-maker and commissioner Olivia Lichtenstein said he became “the editor of choice for so many of us”, with a rare instinct for people and behaviour and an almost uncanny ability to recognise the moment that would unlock a film.
No date of death has been stated in the reports published so far.
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