He was born in 1938 and attended Harrow County School for Boys, from 1949 to 1956. He read English at Brasenose College, Oxford. Anthony Smith had a career in broadcasting starting as a producer of BBC current affairs programmes in the 1960s. He became responsible for running the nightly news programmeTwenty-Four Hours. In the early 1970s, he became a Research Fellow at St Antony's College, Oxford. He worked for the Annan Committee on The Future of Broadcasting, and became engaged in the national debate which led to the foundation of the UK's Channel 4. He was subsequently appointed a Board Director of Channel 4. He also carried out research for the McGregor Commission on the Press, which presented its report in 1976. Between 1979 and 1988 he was Director of the British Film Institute and was involved in the conception and establishment of the Museum of the Moving Image on London's South Bank. In 1988 he was appointed President of Magdalen College, Oxford University, and he retired from this position in 2005. He was made CBE in 1987, and was awarded an honorary degree by Oxford Brookes University in 1997. He served for four years as a Member of the Arts Council of Great Britain and he has had a long association with the Writers & Scholars Educational Trust,, acting for several years as its chairman. He served for ten years as a member of the Cambodia Trust for the rehabilitation of landmine victims, and served also for a decade as Chairman of the Jan Hus Educational Foundation which was active in helping intellectuals and academics in the Czech and Slovak Republics in the years before and after the Velvet Revolution of 1989. Smith currently serves as Patron of the London Film School, Trustee of the Prince of Wales's School of Traditional Arts, and as a board member of the British Institute of Florence, of the Choir of the Sixteen and of the Medical Research Foundation. He is also currently chair of the Hill Foundation, which provides scholarships for very able Russian students to study at Oxford University, and is also chair of the Oxford-Russia Fund, which provides scholarships for students attending universities within Russia, provides English-language books to Russian universities and also sponsors public discussion of topics affecting higher education in Russia.
Writing
Smith has written on broadcasting and the Press, and on the modern information industries in general. His books include:
