Angus MacPhail

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Angus MacPhail (born 8 April 1903 in London - 22 April 1962) was an English screenwriter active from the late 1920s who is known for his work with Alfred Hitchcock.

He was educated at Westminster School and Trinity Hall, Cambridge where he studied English and edited Granta. He first worked in the film business in 1926 writing subtitles for silent films. He then began writing his own scenarios for Gaumont British Studios and Ealing Studios under Sir Michael Balcon. During WW2 he made films for the Ministry of Information.

One of Alfred Hitchcock’s favourite devices for driving the plots of his stories and creating suspense was what he called the “MacGuffin”; the Oxford English Dictionary, credits MacPhail as being the inventor of the term.