Anthony Minghella has died, all of a sudden. He was only in his mid-50s. This is a shocking bit of news. (Especially for all the publications who have upbeat interviews with him connected to BBC1's The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, and cannot amend them, including Radio Times.) Not especially fashionable, he was nonetheless a rare beast in the world of mainstream cinema: someone who believed in making literate movies that demanded intelligence on the part of the audience. I met him around the time of The Talented Mr Ripley and found him to be hugely self-aware and jolly, a man who wore his intellect very lightly and was fun to be around. I was an isolated fan of his last film at the cinema, Breaking And Entering, which many found pretentious, what with all the symbolism and symmetry and Jude Law's line about "talking in metaphors". My theory is that if it had been set in Paris and in French, the critics would have fawned all over it. This is the fate of the British smartypants. I've never read The Englilsh Patient, but I understand Minghella did a terrific job of finding an old-fashioned wartime love story in there and making it into a film (which I also understand novelist Michael Ondaatje was a fan of). This was a poncy film with a relatively complicated structure that made 230 million dollars at the box office and won nine Oscars. Nice job. It's sad that Anthony Minghella is no more. I was able to write a full-length obituary today which will appear in next week's Radio Times.