Phyllis Dalton: A Career in Costume: From Lawrence of Arabia to the Princess Bride

The extraordinary story of costume designer Phyllis Dalton, filled with insights, recollections, and revelations from a life spent on the great film locations of the twentieth century

In conversation with film historian Alexander Ballinger, Phyllis Dalton (1925-2025) reveals how she created some of the silver screen’s most unforgettable and iconic costumes, working with such legendary directors as Alfred Hitchcock and David Lean, a woman in a man’s world.

The book spans Dalton’s extraordinary fifty-year career in the film industry, from sewing in Soho workrooms on Laurence Olivier’s Henry V via intelligence work at Bletchley Park; apprenticeship at Gainsborough Studios to designing costumes on The Man Who Knew Too Much; the epic undertakings of costuming Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago (Oscar, Best Costume Design), and Oliver!; through to cult classics A Private Function and The Princess Bride to her successful late collaboration with a young Kenneth Branagh on Henry V (Oscar, Best Costume Design), Dead Again, and Much Ado About Nothing.

Many of the book’s illustrations, sourced from Dalton’s personal archive, showcase unique ephemera, fabric swatches, production stills, large format pencil-and-watercolour sketches, and production notebooks from six decades of filmmaking. Many of these stunning images, including Dalton’s personal on-location photographs from the Lawrence of Arabia shoot, have never been published before.

Distributed for Clapperboard Books

Alexander Ballinger is a film historian and author of New Cinematographers and The Rough Guide to Film Noir.