Shulman joined the staff of the London
Evening Standard in 1948 and, for over forty years, wrote about theatre, film, television and politics with sharp humour and irreverence. He was theatre critic for the
Standard from 1953 until November 1991, and remained a weekly columnist until February 1996. He had initially become the
Standards film critic in 1948 and later became film critic for
Vogue. For 18 years he was a regular participant in
BBC Radio 4's talk show
Stop The Week. During this time he also wrote two novels,
The Victors (Dell 1963) and
Kill Three (Collins 1967); the
Preep series of children's books; and two serious books on the impact of television,
The Ravenous Eye (Cassel 1973) and
The Least Worst Television in the World (Barrie and Jenkins 1973), as well as a 90-minute play for
BBC 2 also called
Kill Three from which the novel was adapted. (
The Victors was unique in being a novelization of the
Carl Foreman screenplay about American soldiers in WWII, which was itself based upon
Alexander Baron's book of short stories about British WWII soldiers,
The Human Kind. Baron declined to write the novelization himself, wanting it to have an authentic-sounding American voice and avoid retreading his own work; but nonetheless also wanted to select the novelist and maintain control over the project. As the book's copyright registration, assigned to Baron, particularizes, Baron engaged Shulman to write the novelization as a
work for hire.) Shulman and his fellow critic
Herbert Kretzmer co-wrote the story for the film comedy
Every Home Should Have One (1970); the screenplay derived from it was written by the film's star,
Marty Feldman, along with
Barry Took and
Denis Norden; after which the material circled back to Shulman and Kretzmer who
novelized the script—and as a movie tie-in edition, it was published in paperback by
Hodder & Stoughton to coincide with the film's release. Shulman received the
IPA Award as Critic of the Year 1966. In 1956, he wrote a scathing review of a musical
Wild Grows the Heather based on a
J. M. Barrie play,
The Little Minister. Directed by
Ralph Reader, who also wrote the lyrics, it received an ovation on its first night but Shulman and other critics knew that this was because Reader had given out first night tickets to the boys taking part in one of his Boy Scout productions and told them to go along and give the piece a good reception. Among other things, Shulman said that the plot "moved at the pace of cold porridge going uphill." In 1980, he was instrumental in setting up the London Theatre Associate awards for new and revived works undertaken by fringe, community based and touring companies. In 1994, three years after Milton Shulman had retired from theatre reviewing,
The Observer critic
Michael Coveney published
The Aisle is Full of Noises, a spirited "vivisection of the live theatre" which he arranged in the form of a diary, including some witty if not entirely flattering references to Shulman, while bracketing him with "the kosher butchers —
Herbert Kretzmer,
Bernard Levin and
David Nathan". Shulman took great offence, as reported in
The Times newspaper diary of 21 September 1994: "Solicitors are trying to hammer out a deal to prevent court action against
Nick Hern, the small publisher of the offending work. "I thought the comments were in the spirit of the book,' pleads Coveney. 'I rather regret that Milton, of whom I am actually rather fond, didn't take them in that spirit.' Shulman is tight-lipped, 'There are negotiations going on at the moment. I have not issued a writ for libel.'" The outcome was that the book was withdrawn from circulation but, according to Coveney speaking in October 2007, by then most of the copies had been sold. ==Family==