Patrick Doyle

Patrick Doyle studied at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama as a composer, graduating in 1974; he became a Fellow of his alma mater in 2001. His first score for theatre was written in 1978, and he has since become one of the world’s most sought after composers for theatre, radio, television, and film.

He has collaborated extensively with director Kenneth Branagh, and his work on Branagh’s production on Henry V in 1989 won Doyle an Ivor Novello Award for Best Film Theme. A year later, the Prince of Wales commissioned Patrick to write a piece for soprano and choir, The Thistle and The Rose in honour of the Queen Mother’s 90^th birthday.

He was nominated for a Golden Globe for Dead Again and an Oscar for Best Original Score for Hamlet. He received further Golden Globe and Oscar, as well as BAFTA nominations, for Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility. His biggest successes came after the year 2000 with Bridget Jones’ Diary, Gosford Park, Calendar Girls, Nanny McPhee and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

2007 saw Doyle host Patrick Doyle’s Music from the Movies, a sell-out concert at the Royal Albert Hall in aid of the Leukaemia Research Fund, staged by Kenneth Branagh and starring a host of international actors including Emma Thompson, Dame Judi Dench, Alan Rickman, Imelda Staunton, Robbie Coltrane and Sir Derek Jakobi.