Benedict Nightingale

After two decades at The Times, on 1 June 2010 Nightingale was replaced by The Times journalist Libby Purves. This, its consequences and Nightingale's career as a critic, were discussed by Mark Shenton in his 26 January 2010 theatre blog for The Stage.

He worked for The Guardian as a reporter and in 1969 was appointed drama critic of the New Statesman in London, a post which he held until 1986 when he was appointed Professor of English with special reference to Drama at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He spent the whole of the 1983-84 season in New York, writing a series of Sunday theatre columns for The New York Times. His diary of the period was first published by Times Books in 1986 as Fifth Row Center: A Critic's Year On and Off Broadway He was appointed chief theatre critic for The Times in London in 1990 in succession to Irving Wardle.

He is a writer, known for Your Sunday Paper (1967), The South Bank Show (1978) and 2nd House (1973).

Benedict Nightingale was born on May 14, 1939 in Paddington, London, England as William Benedict Herbert Nightingale.

Nightingale is the son of Ronald Nightingale, an estate agent, and Evelyn Florence Margaret Winifred Gardner, whom he wed in 1937; she had previously been married to the writer Evelyn Waugh. Benedict Nightingale has a sister, the landscape architect Virginia Nightingale.