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Bill Rowe (sound engineer)

English sound engineer (1931-1992)

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMay 30, 2026
Entity authorityQ4910719 ↗
Source-derived summary

William Oliver Rowe (2 February 1931 – 29 September 1992) was an English sound engineer. He won a BAFTA Award for Best Sound in 1985 for The Killing Fields and an Academy Award for Best Sound Mixing for The Last Emperor in 1988. He worked on more than 160 films between 1955 and 1992.

Editorial summary

“Bill Rowe (sound engineer)” enters the record as english sound engineer (1931-1992). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Bill, Rowe and sound can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1931, 1992, 1985, 1988—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1931-02-02. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Bill, Rowe and sound.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Bill Rowe (sound engineer)” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Bill, Rowe and sound provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4910719. VIAF identifies the subject as 311656292. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1931, 1992, 1985 and 1988.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Bill Rowe (sound engineer)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Bill Rowe (sound engineer) primary sources, Bill Rowe (sound engineer) archive and Bill research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Bill Rowe (sound engineer)”?
  2. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
  3. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Bill Rowe (sound engineer)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.