Anthony Minghella Anthony Minghella Anthony Minghella, (6 January 195418 March 2008) was a British film director, playwright and screenwriter. He was chairman of the board of Governors at the British Film Institute between 2003 and 2007. He won the Academy Award for Best Director for "The English Patient" (1996). In addition, he received three more Academy Award nominations; he was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay for both "The English Patient" (1996) and "The Talented Mr. Ripley" (1999), and was posthumously nominated for Best Picture for "The Reader" (2008), as a co-producer. Minghella was born in Ryde, on the Isle of Wight, an
William Fiennes (author) Celia Fiennes (1662-1741). William Fiennes (author) The Hon William Fiennes is a British author. Fiennes was educated at the Dragon School in Oxford, Eton College, and Oxford University, where he received both undergraduate and graduate degrees. Aged 19, after a year teaching in Brazil, he was diagnosed with Crohn's disease. His first book, "The Snow Geese" (2002), is an account of following snow geese from Texas to their summer breeding grounds on Baffin Island, and a meditation on the idea of home. It was shortlisted for the 2002 Samuel Johnson Prize and won the 2003 Hawthornden Prize, the 2003 Somerset