From Cambridge University (where he was also President of the Marlowe Society), he joined the BBC. Following an apprenticeship with Ken Russell and Jonathan Miller, Palmer's first major film, Benjamin Britten & his Festival, became the first BBC film to be networked in the U.S.A. With his second film, All My Loving, an examination of rock 'n' roll & politics in the late 1960s, he achieved considerable notoriety overnight.
In 1989, he was awarded a huge retrospective of his work at the National Film Theatre in London, the first maker of arts films to be so honoured.
In addition to films, Tony Palmer has also directed in the theatre and in the opera house. After a successful debut at the Zurich Opera House with Peter Grimes ("the high point of the season", Neue Zürcher Zeitung), he had a double triumph in Karlsruhe, War and Peace, and again in Zurich with Berlioz's masterpiece, The Trojans ("marvellous" - London Daily Express). In Saint Petersburg, he directed the Russian premiere of Parsifal ("world class" - The Times), conducted by Valery Gergiev, with Plácido Domingo. He has also directed in Hamburg, Munich, Augsburg, Savonlinna, Berlin and Helsinki and recently became the first Western director ever to work at the Bolshoi in Moscow.
Parsifal won Best Theatre Production ('Casta Diva') in Moscow, 1997, as well as a 'Golden Mask'. On the West End stage he has directed the world premiere of John Osborne's Look Back in Anger Part Two, Déjà Vu. Mr Palmer also presented the BBC Radio 3 Arts magazine 'Night Waves', for which he won a Sony Award for best arts programme.
Tony Palmer has published several books, and has written for The New York Times, The Times, Punch, Life magazine etc. From 1967-74 he was a regular music critic for The Observer. From 1969-74 he had a weekly column in The Spectator entitled 'Notes from the Underground'.
