Tom Priestley, who has died aged 91, knew early on that he wanted a career in the arts. “But my father had covered so much territory, there wasn’t much left,” he said. He was the sixth child and only son of the playwright and novelist JB Priestley.
The discipline he eventually chose, and excelled at, was film editing. He won a Bafta for Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment (1966), Karel Reisz’s dark comedy about conformity and rebellion, starring David Warner and Vanessa Redgrave. He was also nominated for an Oscar for John Boorman’s thriller Deliverance (1972), with Burt Reynolds and Jon Voight. It was adapted by James Dickey from his own novel about four friends who are terrorised by Appalachian locals while on a canoeing trip.
