Oscar and BAFTA award-winning cinematographer Ossie Morris has died.

Mr Morris was born in Ruislip in 1915 and lived in what was then Station Parade, now part of Ruislip High Street, and educated at Bishopshalt School in Royal Lane. He died on Monday at his home in Fontmell Magna in Dorset, aged 98.

Kim Rowe, Bishopshalt headteacher, paid tribute to Mr Morris.

“We were saddened to hear of the death of Oswald Morris, a former student of Bishopshalt School.

“We hold dear the achievements of our former students, and clearly, Oswald was enormously successful in his field. Our thoughts go to his family”.

According to the British Society of Cinematographers, Mr Morris got into film as a teenager, working as a cinema projectionist in his school holidays before landing a job at Wembley Studios in 1932, working as a clapper loader and runner.

After a move to Elstree Studios in Herts, he enlisted in RAF Bomber Command at the outbreak of the Second World War, earning a DFC.

After the war he found work at Pinewood Studios in Iver Heath, working as a camera operator, a role he held on David Lean’s classic production of Oliver Twist.

Other films in his repertoire include The Guns Of Navarone, The Man Who Would Be King, Moby Dick, Our Man In Havana and Look Back In Anger.

He won BAFTAs for The Pumpkin Eater, The Hill and The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, and was Oscar nominated for the musical classic Oliver! of 1968. He would win the Academy Award three years later, for Fiddler On The Roof.

Ossie Morris was a stalwart of BAFTA for many years, serving on the board for a total of 22 years, and in the role of president from 1960-62.

Ruislip local hostorian Eileen Bowlt, whose book Ruislip Through Time was published last year, kindly provided the picture, below, of The Greenway Stores, birthplace of Ossie Morris, and a 2012 picture of the same scene.

The stores building is now the Synergy Spa, at 157 High Street.

“The late Hugh Mansford – who used to have his hair cut in a room at the back of The Greenway Stores – mentioned in his memoirs how the house opposite The Greenway Stores was occupied by a man called Mr Dicky, who was ‘in films’”, she explained.

“He used to make films outside his house, turning the camera handle by hand.

“The young Ossie Morris is likely to have seen this.”

Picture of Ossie Morris courtesy of Richard Blanshard