Photographic Portrait of the Month

Since June 2007 the National Portrait Gallery has highlighted a recently acquired and previously unseen photographic portrait to coincide with a current event, anniversary or a display elsewhere in the Gallery.

October 2008
Room 39

Alan Coren 1938-2007
by Trevor Leighton (b. 1957)
Bromide fibre print, 27 August 1987

Writer and broadcaster. Coren was born in Barnet, Hertfordshire where he attended grammar school before winning a scholarship to Wadham College, Oxford and attending the Universities of Minnesota, Yale, and Berkeley in America. After the successful submission of humorous articles to Punch magazine, Coren was offered a job there as Assistant Editor in 1963. He was promoted to become Editor of the magazine (1978-87) and of The Listener (1988-9). Dubbed the funniest writer in Britain, Coren worked as a critic and columnist. Coren's satirical books included Golfing for Cats (1975), Something for the Weekend (1986) and A Year in Cricklewood (1991). He was widely known as a regular panellist on BBC Radio 4's The News Quiz (1975-2007) and a team captain on BBC TV's Call My Bluff.

This Portrait of the Month ties in with Radio 4 tributes throughout October and pays tribute to the life of Alan Coren one year after his death. An anthology of his writing Chocolate & Cuckoo Clocks, edited by his son Giles Coren, restaurant critic for The Times and his daughter Victoria Coren, writer, presenter and European Poker champion, is published on 2 October.

Previous Portraits of the Month
2008: November | October | September | August | July | June | May | April | March | February | January
2007: December | November | October | September | August | July | June

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All images and text are subject to copyright protection. 20 November 2008