Background
Born in Maybole, Ayrshire, in Scotland, Dent lost his mother when he was two years old.
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Alan Dent
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He was educated at Carrick Academy and Glasgow University, where he began to study medicine at the age of 16, but later switched to French, English and Italian.
Career
He left the university without a degree in 1926 heading for London. After his graduation, he approached the critic James Agate with the hope of becoming his secretary, and was appointed. He remained with Agate for 14 years.
Later in Agate"s Ego volumes of diaries and letters Dent was, according to John Gielgud, called "Jock".
During the Second World War he served in the Royal Navy. After the war he became the film critic of the Illustrated London News and broadcast for the British Broadcasting Corporation"s European Service.
He was text editor and advisor to Laurence Olivier for his three Shakespeare films as star and director: Henry V (1944), Hamlet (1948), and Richard III (1955). Dent died at his home in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, on 19 December 1978, aged 73.
