Peter Cowie
British historian
Peter Cowie (born 24 December 1939) is a British film historian and author of more than thirty books on film. In 1963 he was the founder/publisher and general editor of the annual International Film Guide, a survey of worldwide film production, which he continued to edit for forty years.
Life and career
Educated at Charterhouse School, and an exhibitioner in history at Magdalene College, Cambridge, he began writing about film in 1960. He has contributed to many of the world's leading newspapers and periodicals, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Sunday Times (London), the Los Angeles Times, Le Monde, Expressen, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Sight and Sound, Variety and Film Comment.
His books include definitive surveys of the Scandinavian cinema, in particular the work of Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman. In fact, Cowie himself has said that he belongs to a generation whose life was changed by seeing The Seventh Seal.
In 1963 he published the first edition of International Film Guide which he continued to publish annually for 40 years. During the period 1963–1988, he published almost 100 books on film by various authors at The Tantivy Press in London, including classics like Robin Wood's Hitchcock's Films. He also launched annual publications on sport (International Cycling Guide, International Running Guide), classical music (International Music Guide), television (International TV and Video Guide) and the Nordic area (The Scandinavian Guide).
Other aspects of his work in the area of Scandinavian cinema include his service on the "Quality Awards" Jury of the Swedish Film Institute for 11 years from the 1970s where he was its only non-Nordic member.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Peter Cowie” is british historian. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Peter, Cowie and British, not as a finished interpretation.
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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 Sep 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7173424. VIAF identifies the subject as 110482022. The Library of Congress control number is n50018771. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1939, 1963, 1960 and 1988.
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This entry incorporates text from “Peter Cowie” 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.