My friend Peter Coulson, who has died aged 82, was one of the finest film editors of his generation. Across 20 years he edited some of the most memorable productions in the BBC’s drama output, including the 1971 film Cider With Rosie, four Plays for Today and the 1995 Pride and Prejudice miniseries that starred Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle. Among his 29 films and dramas were nine with the director Charles Sturridge, three of which (Gulliver’s Travels, 1996, Longitude, 2000, and Shackleton, 2002) earned him Bafta nominations for best editing.
Sturridge explained how sending his rushes (the rushed print) from a day’s filming on location, to Peter, his editor, often based in Soho, London, “is pretty much like sending the pages of your diary as you are writing it. Every omission, fudged moment, missed beat scene, would land, uncensored, in front of Peter.”
Then, after a few hurried conversations, Sturridge said, Peter would “gently reassure that there was a thread, point out where performances were working and occasionally suggest a missing link. He had a meticulous eye for the details of an actor’s performance and finally, when everyone had approved everything, there would be a final pass where he would look back through every take for a slightly neater head turn or a different blink. In the cutting room, every day sees an improvement, sometimes infinitesimal, and sometimes unutterably miraculous, as the true shape of the story begins to emerge.”
Peter grew up in Coulsdon, Surrey. His father, Bevis, a former London estate agent, was killed on wartime service with the Royal Engineers in the Netherlands in 1944, after which his mother, Vera, worked at the Board of Trade as a secretary. At Charterhouse school, shooting was Peter’s key interest and he was one of the school’s top marksmen. He was also a keen sailor and climber, and a member of the British Schools Exploration Society.
After attending Trinity College Dublin, he returned to the UK and enrolled at the London School of Film Technique. From there, in 1964 he joined the BBC, working at its Ealing Studios, which at that time housed more than 50 cutting rooms. It was there that Peter learned and perfected his craft.
By 1976 he had gone freelance as a cameraman and editor, and later he set up his own production company, Lodestar. In 1985 Peter wrote, directed and produced a programme, Plant Hunters, for the BBC’s World About Us series.
He married Celia Bannister in 1965, and they settled in London, moving home frequently – they had 18 different addresses over the years and always managed to keep a country bolthole. After Celia’s death in 2011, Peter made his final move, to east Twickenham.
He is survived by their children, Serena and Charles, and four grandchildren.
