Richard Roud, film writer and co-founder and director of the New York Film Festival, was one of the most influential film critics of the twentieth century. Renowned for his close relationships with French New Wave directors such as Godard and Truffaut, he played a key role in bringing European art cinema to the attention of American and British audiences.

This anthology brings together selected writings from his published works with previously unpublished archival material – from an unfinished study of Truffaut, to extracts from his books on film-makers such as Straub-Huillet and Ophüls, and articles for The Guardian and Sight & Sound. Charting Roud's journey through the world of film festivals and film criticism from the 1950s to the 1980s, Decades Never Start on Time provides a fascinating insight into the flourishing film culture of the era.

With a preface by David Thomson.

"Topical in the best sense, these bulletins from the front are the first draft of film history." - Film Comment "Even before Andrew Sarris and Susan Sontag, Richard Roud was a key translator/programmer of continental cinema for the Anglo-American public, and it's extremely gratifying to finally have a collection of his film writing." Jonathan Rosenbaum, Film Critic and Writer "This new anthology put together by Michael Temple and Richard's neice Karen Smolens gives a vivid picture of the sort of writer he was and, behind the writer, of the man himself.' - Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, Sight & Sound "A very enjoyable book for cinephiles to dip into... [Roud's writings] still seem fresh and urgent 40 years or more after most were filed." - Geoffrey McNab, The Independent

Michael Temple is Reader in Film and Media at Birkbeck, University of London, UK. He is author of Jean Vigo (2005) and co-editor of The French Cinema Book (2004) and Jean-Luc Godard: Documents (2006), among other titles.

Karen Smolens is the niece of Richard Roud. She attended her first New York Film Festival at age 13, where she saw her uncle moderate a press conference with Roberto Rossellini following a screening of The Rise of Louis XIV (1966). She lives in Brookline, Massachusetts, USA.