I was born in 1944 in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, and grew up in Hendon, a suburb of London, just after the Second World War. My father was Alexis, and he was born in South Africa but brought up in Holland. He was a composer and pianist, and my mother, Janet, was his piano pupil.

Home was a tiny semi-D in West Hendon. A lively place it was too - with five people crammed into it together with a grand piano, an upright, and ream upon ream of music and books.

Composing seemed to be second nature. Waltzes and marches were soon being produced non-stop, but things became much more serious in the teen years. I listened continually to everything from pop music to Bartok, Strawinski and Schonberg. Four years at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama followed. There I studied composition, piano and percussion and my tutors included Dr Edmund Rubbra, James Gibb, Brian Trowell and Richard Rodney Bennett. Simultaneously I became a Bachelor of Music at Durham University.

My first professional engagements were as an arranger. I provided the backings for a wide variety of recording artists including Mel Torme, Shirley Bassey, The Hollies, Colin Blunstone and saxophonist Phil Woods. At the same time I composed the music for a lot of advertising campaigns, some of them long-running.

I have spent the greater part of my career writing television and film scores, which vary in character from period pieces to contemporary drama. I have won four BAFTA awards for 'La Vie en Rose,' Agatha Christie's 'Poirot', 'Middlemarch', and 'Porterhouse Blue', and three Ivor Novello Awards for 'Rebecca', 'Under Suspicion', and 'Firelight'. My scores for 'The Big Battalions', 'Wild Africa', 'Cold Lazarus', 'When the Whales Came' and 'Winalot' have also received nominations for BAFTA and Ivor Novello Awards, and my music for the 'Martini' advertising campaign, heard around the world for thirty years, has won three Clio awards. My most recent film commission was the score for "La Mome," also known as "La Vie en Rose," a feature film starring Marion Cotillard as Edith Piaf and directed by Olivier Dahan. On a wonderful night in February 2008, I was presented with the BAFTA award for Best Music and on the same night, the film won 3 more BAFTA awards, including one for Marion Cotillard as 'best actress' - she was completely overcome, as indeed, was I.

I love working with orchestras, and generally orchestrate and conduct my own material; my score for "Cold Lazarus" by Dennis Potter was recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra, and "Yorkshire Glory" by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic. I am equally at home with computers and electronic instruments.

I am turning my hand increasingly to concert music. My Piano Concerto is available on CD recorded by Olga Dudnik and the Slovak Radio Symphony orchestra, together with "Storm!" and Symphony no 1. My Concerto for Soprano Saxophone "On Hungerford Bridge" has been recorded by John Harle with the Academy of St Martins in the Fields, and "The Lobster" by Nicole Tibbels with the Mephisto Ensemble. Recent works include Symphonies no 3 and 4, and concertos for the oboe and the clarinet. We are to record the two most recent symphonies and the Oboe Concerto with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in March 2008, with my daughter Verity playing the oboe part.

In a completely different vein, my album "Skylines" contains "The Belgian Detective," (the award winning theme from "Agatha Christie's Poirot,") and a reworking of my "Martini" theme, as well as a good deal of new material, a lot of which is rock-based. Please see the discography page for details.

Christopher Gunning February 2008