Derek Malcolm, who served as the Guardian’s film critic for more than 25 years, has died at the age of 91.

His death on Saturday was confirmed by his wife, the historian Sarah Gristwood. He died at home in Deal, of heart and lung failure, after a few months of illness.

Malcolm joined the Guardian in the early 1970s and wrote a weekly film column until 1999; the longest post in a strikingly successful and varied career.

After the Guardian, he joined the Evening Standard and, after his departure as their chief film critic in 2009, continued to be active on the reviewing circuit and served as honorary president of the International Federation of Film Critics (Fipresci).

He was a respected staple of film festivals such as Cannes and Berlin, and a much-loved presence in the screening rooms of Soho, where national film critics would gather each week to preview the upcoming releases.

His 90th birthday party at the British Film Institute in London in 2022 was a well-attended and star-studded affair, testimony to the many friends Malcolm had made within the industry.

Malcolm was born in 1932 and educated at Eton, which he hated. When he was 16, he learned that his parents had been the talk of the town more than a decade before he was born, after his father shot his mother’s lover dead.

Despite no suggestion he acted in self-defence, Douglas Malcolm was acquitted at the Old Bailey. After the trial, he and his wife, Dorothy, remained together until the end of their lives, although unhappily: ‘‘partners forged in purgatory, if not in hell,’’ wrote their son in his 2003 memoir, Family Secrets.

Derek, too, had a life rich in drama: after studying at Oxford, he spent two years as a National Hunt jockey. But despite 13 wins, he swapped careers, telling the Evening Standard: “But I thought, ‘Bugger this. This is too hard. I’ll be an actor instead.’”

After three years of repertory theatre, he had had enough. “Awful stuff,” he said, “Bored me shitless. I was always the juvenile lead, walking in through the french windows and saying, ‘Anyone for tennis?’”

“I was quite pretty in those days. Most of the other actors were gay. They all used to say, ‘Go on, you know you are too.’ That’s one reason I gave up. I thought, ‘Bugger this for a laugh.’”

A slight figure with a dry wit and pixie-ish grin, Malcolm’s charm and irreverence made him a popular figure in the swinging 60s; a close friend of Christine Keeler, and an acquaintance of the Krays.

His lively stories of the time, often featuring unpublishable details and compromising positions, later became the stuff of legend to awed younger colleagues.

Katharine Viner, the editor-in-chief of the Guardian, said: “Derek was a brilliant and incisive writer and the voice of Guardian film for many years. He was held in unusually warm regard within the industry, yet he was unafraid to call out mediocre films by acclaimed directors, and eager to champion new voices whenever their work met his standards.”

She added: “He was also tremendous good fun and will be greatly missed.”

Malcolm was hired as the Guardian’s film critic under Alastair Hetherington, and continued in the role throughout the editorship of Hetherington’s successor, Peter Preston, as well as into the first few years of Alan Rusbridger’s tenure in the top job.

For several years in the early 80s, he combined his role at the Guardian with the artistic directorship of the London film festival, as well as hosting BBC2’s The Film Club programme, which focused on arthouse releases.

Malcolm’s tastes were resolutely highbrow, and although a frequently very funny writer, he was unamused by much mainstream western cinema. As part of his departure from the Guardian, he wrote a series of articles – A Century of Film – in which he chose 100 movies, one from each key director he admired.

Cocteau, Bergman, Buñuel, Ozu and Dreyer were included, but no films made after 1985 made the cut. However, his favourite film stars were Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, with whom he had tea and buns aged 14. It was, he wrote in an article for the Guardian in 2018, one of the most cherishable moments of his life.

He is survived by a daughter, Jackie, from his first marriage, and by Gristwood, whom he married in 1994.