Matthew Sweet (writer)

Early life

Born in Hull, Sweet received a doctorate from Oxford on Wilkie Collins.

Career

Sweet was among the contributors to The Oxford Companion to English Literature and was both film and television critic for The Independent on Sunday.

Sweet's book Shepperton Babylon: The Lost Worlds of British Cinema (2005) is a history of Shepperton Studios and the British film business from the silent days, and includes interviews with surviving figures from the period. A television documentary series was adapted from the book.

Sweet has written other television films and series, including Silent Britain, Checking into History, British Film Forever, The Rules of Film Noir, Truly, Madly, Cheaply!: British B Movies, and A Brief History of Fun. He presented a BBC Radio 4 programme The Philosopher's Arms, a show recorded in front of a live audience in which classic philosophical concerns were explored. From 2013 until October 2025 he was the presenter of the BBC Radio 3 programme Sound of Cinema, which is concerned with film scores and their composers,. He is also a regular presenter of Night Waves (now titled Free Thinking) on the same network.

Sweet is a fan of the science fiction television series Doctor Who and has written several Doctor Who audio plays and short stories. He has also presented several documentaries about the series for the DVD range, including Chain Reaction (about The Caves of Androzani) and Nice or Nasty?: The Making of Vengeance on Varos, as well as conducting in-depth interviews with prominent cast and crew members for the *Doctor Who: The Collection * Blu-Ray box sets. He also presented the 50th-anniversary retrospective of the series for The Culture Show called Me, You and Doctor Who in 2013. Piers Morgan interviewed him on Good Morning Britain in 2017 about the casting of the first woman to play The Doctor.

In 2025, Sweet co-wrote the mystery television series Bookish with writer-actor Mark Gatiss.

Bibliography

• Operation Chaos: The Vietnam Deserters Who Fought the CIA, the Brainwashers, and Each Other (2018), Pan Macmillan, ,
• Inventing the Victorians (2001), debunking the stereotypes and myths about the Victorian Era, Faber and Faber , St. Martin's Press (hardcover, 1st US edition)
• Shepperton Babylon: The Lost Worlds of British Cinema (2005) Faber and Faber
• The West End Front (2011), Faber and Faber, a history of London’s grand hotels during the Second World War
• The New Forest Murders (2025), Simon & Schuster, a murder mystery novel set in World War II
• Bookish (2025), Quercus, novelisation of the television series

Audio dramas

• Doctor Who: Year of the Pig
• Doctor Who: The Magic Mousetrap
• Bernice Summerfield: The Diet of Worms
• Jago and Litefoot: The Man at the End of the Garden
• Jago and Litefoot: The Lonely Clock
• The Voyages of Jago & Litefoot: Voyage to the New World
• Jago and Litefoot: Return of the Repressed
• Jago and Litefoot: Maurice

Short stories

• "The Lampblack Wars" - Short Trips: The History of Christmas
• "The Earwig Archipelago" - Short Trips: Time Signature

References

References

1. (2014). "Theatre and National Identity: Re-Imagining Conceptions of Nation". [[Routledge]].
2. "Free Thinking {{!}} Matthew Sweet". BBC Radio 3.
3. Contributors]. {{webarchive. link. (29 September 2007)
4. Bracewell, Michael. (2 April 2005). "Ah, Shepperton ...". [[The Guardian]].
5. [http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b014b73y ''The Philosopher's Arms'' page], BBC Radio 4.
6. "BBC Radio 3 - Sound of Cinema - Available now".
7. "Matthew Sweet’s exit from Radio 3’s Sound of Cinema is a disaster".
8. Sweet, Matthew. "Just went on Good Morning Britain to talk Jodie Whittaker. Told by presenters that Twitter is ablaze with angry female fans. Eh? Really?".
9. Daly, Helen. (17 July 2017). "Piers Morgan likens Alan Sugar to genderless Doctor Who villain amid Jodie Whittaker chat". [[Daily Express]].