Hepple, Peter 1927-2006 (Peter William Hepple)

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born January 2, 1927, in London, England; died October 12, 2006. Critic, editor, and author. Hepple was a longtime drama critic for London's weekly theater journal the Stage. He was educated at the City of London School in the early 1940s. Too young to serve in the military during World War II, he enlisted in the Corps of Royal Engineers in 1945 and saw assignments in Egypt and Turkey. Finishing his National Service in 1948, he studied surveying for a while and then joined the editorial staff for the reference book Burke's Peerage and Burke's Landed Gentry. From 1952 to 1972, he was an editor for the Institute of Petroleum London, and during the last seven years of this employment edited the Journal of the Institute of Petroleum and the Institute of Petroleum Review. Hepple came into his own, however, as editor of the Stage. He had already been contributing criticism to the weekly journal for about twenty years when he was named editor in 1972, so it was a natural transition. Serving in this post until 1992, and still contributing to it for years afterwards, Hepple wrote on theater productions ranging from West End favorites to cabaret shows, jazz concerts, and operas. He was just as happy to review a low-budget pub show as a big-stage production, and was noted as being one of the profession's most versatile critics.

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

BOOKS

Contemporary Theatre, Film, and Television, Volume 5, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1988.

PERIODICALS

Times (London, England), October 17, 2006, p. 67.