John Barry

Barry grew up around the cinemas his father ran in York, studied piano and trumpet, took composition lessons from the cathedral organist Francis Jackson and played and arranged for army ensembles during national service. The John Barry Seven and a run of arranging work for singers and television led him to film, and in 1962 he was handed Monty Norman's theme for Dr. No to arrange and record: he subsequently scored eleven Bond films. Away from Bond his scores included Zulu, Born Free, The Lion in Winter, Midnight Cowboy, Out of Africa, Dances with Wolves. Five Academy Awards followed. He was born John Barry Prendergast and worked latterly in the United States, where he died in 2011. Of the five Academy Awards, two were for Born Free and one each for The Lion in Winter, which also brought him the first BAFTA for film music, Dances with Wolves and Out of Africa; a Golden Globe followed for the last of these in 1986. Beyond the cinema he wrote the theme for the television series The Persuaders!, and his scores include Mary, Queen of Scots, The Tamarind Seed, The Cotton Club and Chaplin. He moved to the United States in 1975, was appointed OBE in 1999 for services to music, finished his last score, for Enigma, in 2001, and was made a Fellow of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts in 2005.