English film historian, critic and curator Richard Dyer was BOTD in 1945. Born in London, he studied at the University of St Andrews and the University of Birmingham. A Socialist since his teens, Dyer wrote for Gay Left and Marxism Today, exploring topics including the importance of disco in gay culture and the careers of gay icons Diana Ross and Barbra Streisand. Dyer became a lecturer at the University of Warwick before taking up a professorship in film studies at King’s College London, teaching courses on film history, cultural depictions of race and ethnicity and LGBT representation in Hollywood. His publications include Stars, an analysis of how movie stardom affects film spectatorship, focusing on the (queer) personas of Marlon Brando, Bette Davis, Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford and Marilyn Monroe; White: Essays on Race and Culture, examining the dominance of whiteness over five centuries of Western culture; and The Culture of Queers, a study of the history of LGBT self-identification. In 1977, he programmed the first retrospective of gay films at the National Film Festival. He has appeared in a number of documentaries about gay culture and history, notably Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman’s 1996 film The Celluloid Closet, a survey of Hollywood depictions of homosexuality. Dyer lives in London.