Michael Ratcliffe, who has died aged 89, was the former theatre critic of the Observer. He was one of the last of the “man of letters” breed of journalist who encompassed all the arts, with experience, erudition and a regard for the great tradition, especially in Europe, but an open, expansive and always analytical attitude to innovation.
Most of his work was that of a literary editor and critic. When I read his reviews as chief book reviewer on the Times for a decade in the 1970s, I could not believe there was one person writing these extraordinary short essays across every topic, week in, week out. In this respect, he was a latter-day Philip Toynbee, or Anthony Burgess.
He was not a sprinter, nor a marathon runner as a critic, but a superb middle-distance performer. His only full-length book was the completion (following the author’s death) of The Bodley Head 1887-1987 (1987), a centenary history of the publishers of Graham Greene, Muriel Spark and Maurice Sendak, written by his editorial colleague in his Sunday Times years JW Lambert. Ratcliffe had previously published a volume, The Novel Today (1968), for the British Council.
Those years on the Sunday Times (1962-67) and the Times (as literary editor, then chief book reviewer, 1967-82) were followed by more than a decade at the Observer, where he was theatre critic from 1984 to 1989 and literary editor from 1990 to 1995.
He wore his authority lightly. As a critic, he was perhaps under the radar, not necessarily the best place to be. But that was because of his innate modesty. His manner was serene, almost episcopal in his stately, unflamboyant carriage and expression. And his voice was as sturdily baritonal as that of any celebrated singer.
You only have to read his deeply felt, lacerating and informed reviews of, say, Martin Amis’s The Information (1995), Penelope Fitzgerald’s The Blue Flower (1995) and Robert Nye’s Falstaff (1976) – hailed as “one of the most ambitious and seductive novels of the decade” – to know you are in the hands of someone you can trust, enjoy and then argue with. His prose style was fluid and unshowy, decked with pointed cross-references and illuminating comparisons.
In the theatre of the 80s he was conspicuously supportive of such outstanding new companies as Cheek By Jowl, directed by Declan Donnellan and his designer partner Nick Ormerod, and of Mike Alfreds’ Shared Experience. Both were small-scale operations that prospered widely because of his championship, becoming hugely influential.
And he saw, and wrote about, Peter Brook’s sensational production of The Mahabharata (1985) four times over three years – in a quarry near Avignon, at the Bouffes du Nord in Paris, in Brooklyn, New York, and in Glasgow, where it launched an exciting new arts space in the former Museum of Transport – aligning the work with all manner of previous cultural emanations. His last published writing was a magisterial obituary of Brook in this paper in 2022.
He was also an unswerving admirer of Stephen Sondheim, writing incisive, penetrating programme notes and interviews over the years, occasionally dining with him in New York, too. On the other hand, he wasn’t mad about “rock opera”, describing Les Misérables (wrongly, in my view) as “a witless and synthetic entertainment”.
This was perhaps surprising, given his immersion in European music and theatre – he was made an officer of the German federal order of merit in 2003 for his attention to, and coverage of, German theatre – but he responded more full-heartedly to the European plays of Tom Stoppard and Christopher Hampton. He admired the latter’s wonderful Tales from Hollywood (1983) – about the émigré writers in Hollywood after the fall of Vienna in 1938: Brecht, Heinrich Mann, the ghost of Ödön von Horváth – “an ability to assimilate quantities of documentary material and animate them into shapely dramatic life”.
Michael was born in Cheadle Hulme, Manchester, the elder son of Joyce (nee Dilks), a pianist trained at what is now the Royal Northern College of Music, and Donald Ratcliffe, a bank manager. He was educated at Cheadle Hulme school and Christ’s College, Cambridge, where he studied modern history.
After working in the late 50s as a supply teacher in Manchester, he was a trainee journalist on the Sheffield Telegraph (1958-61) before joining the Sunday Times in 1962 as assistant arts and literary editor to Lambert. He moved to the Times in 1967 as literary editor for 10 years, continuing in 1972 for another 10 as chief book reviewer, before joining the Observer in 1984.
In 1971, he met Howard Lichterman, a statistician and subsequently marketing executive at the Welsh National Opera and English National Opera, who had arrived from his native city of New York with a list of contacts who might help him promulgate his artistic enthusiasms. He and Michael lived together from that year on, and when Howard, with Richard Barran, formed the specialist tour company London Arts Discovery Tours in 1981, their lives were even more professionally entwined.
Michael was a regular guest for the critic sessions with visiting Americans and led tours as a guide in some of his favourite cities – Budapest, Paris, Vienna and Berlin. His knowledge of the cultural high spots and the venues of musical, theatrical and operatic premieres was faultless. And of course he could speak of the works themselves.
His many outstanding essays included a contribution to the sumptuous British Theatre Design: The Modern Age (1989), edited by John Goodwin, in which he said “the 80s classical British theatre moved from leather to garbage, towards conspicuous consumption, architectural grandeur and a kind of magpie, eclectic resourcefulness”; and, in Prospect magazine in 1996, a definitive assessment of gay fiction from Edmund White to Alan Hollinghurst in its social and historical context.
Michael and Howard – they formed a civil partnership in 2006 and married in 2015 – travelled often to their favourite spots such as Lake Como and Salzburg (for the music festival), lived in London at first in Westbourne Park, then Islington and latterly in Clerkenwell.
He is survived by Howard. His younger brother, Richard, predeceased him.
• John Michael Ratcliffe, theatre critic and literary editor, born 15 June 1935; died 14 March 2025
