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- First elected to the House of Commons in 1931, served as Parliamentary Private Secretary to Neville Chamberlain (1935-40). He lost his seat in the Labour Party landslide of 1945 and regained it at the next election. But his father the 13th Earl died in 1951, just a year after Alec regained his seat in the House. As a result, he had to resign and join the House of Lords of the 14th Earl of Home (which is pronounced "Hume"). Created a KT (Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Thistle) in 1962, the next year saw him chosen Prime Minister after his predecessor, Harold Macmillan, resigned due to ill health. The Peerage Act of 1963 allowed him to give up his title and, after a by-election, return to the House of Commons representing a new constituency. 15 months as PM was followed by a narrow defeat in the 1964 General Election. He spent 6 years in opposition, before becoming Foreign Secretary in Edward Heath's 1970 government. After 4 years, Heath was defeated in two elections within a year and Home accepted a life peerage, and returned to the House of Lords as Lord Home of the Hirsel. He died in 1995, and was succeeded as 15th Earl of Home by his son, David Douglas-Home.
- Actor
- Director
- Producer
Sir Cedric Hardwicke, one of the great character actors in the first decades of the talking picture, was born in Lye, England on February 19, 1893. Hardwicke attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and made his stage debut in 1912. His career was interrupted by military service in World War I, but he returned to the stage in 1922 with the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, distinguishing himself as Caesar in George Bernard Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra, which was his ticket to the London stage. For his distinguished work on the stage and in films, he was knighted by King George V in 1934, a time when very few actors received such an honor.
Hardwicke first performed on the American stage in 1936 and emigrated to the United States permanently after spending the 1948 season with the Old Vic. Hardwicke's success on stage and in films and television was abetted by his resonant voice and aristocratic bearing. Among the major films he appeared in were Les Misérables (1935), Stanley and Livingstone (1939), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939), Suspicion (1941), A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1949), and The Ten Commandments (1956).
His last film was The Pumpkin Eater (1964) in 1964. Cedric Hardwicke died on August 6, 1964 in New York City, New York.- Writer
- Actor
This Journalist and author, who studied law at the University of Hull has been MP for Sunderland South since 1987.
His books include the novels: "A Very British Coup" (1982), "The Last Man Out of Saigon" (1986), and "The Year of the Fire Monkey" (1991) as well as the non fiction "Error of judgement - The Truth About the Birmingham Bombings".
As a member of the House of Commons he has been a member of the Home Affairs Select Committee 1992-99 and 2001 -; chairman 1997-99 and 2001-2003 and of the Standard and Privileges Committee 2006 - date He has also served as a Minister, as Parliamentary Under Secretary of State: Foreign and Commonwealth Office, June 2003 - May 2005 Department of Environment, Transport and the Regions, 1999-2001. Department of International Development, 2001 (Feb-June).- Writer
- Producer
- Actor
Born 8 May 1926, the younger brother of actor Lord Richard Attenborough. He never expressed a wish to act and, instead, studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge University, graduating in 1947, the year he began his two years National Service in the Royal Navy. In 1952, he joined BBC Television at Alexandra Palace and, in 1954, began his famous "Zoo Quest" series. When not "Zoo Questing", he presented political broadcasts, archaeological quizzes, short stories, gardening and religious programmes.
1964 saw the start of BBC2, Britain's third TV channel, with Michael Peacock as its Controller. A year later, Peacock was promoted to BBC1 and Attenborough became Controller of BBC2. As such, he was responsible for the introduction of colour television into Britain, and also for bringing Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969) to the world.
In 1969, he was appointed Director of Programmes with editorial responsibility for both the BBC's television networks. Eight years behind a desk was too much for him, and he resigned in 1973 to return to programme making. First came "Eastwards with Attenborough", a natural history series set in South East Asia, then The Tribal Eye (1975) , examining tribal art. In 1979, he wrote and presented all 13 parts of Life on Earth (1979) (then the most ambitious series ever produced by the BBC Natural History Unit). This became a trilogy, with The Living Planet (1984) and The Trials of Life (1990).
His services to television were recognised in 1985, and he was knighted to become Sir David Attenborough. The two shorter series, "The First Eden" and "Lost Worlds, Vanished Lives" were fitted around 1993's spectacular Life in the Freezer (1993), a celebration of Antarctica and 1995's epic The Private Life of Plants (1995), which he wrote and presented. Filming the beautiful birds of paradise for Attenborough in Paradise (1996) in 1996 fulfilled a lifelong ambition, putting him near his favourite bird. Entering his seventies, he narrated the award-winning Wildlife Specials (1995), marking 40 years of the BBC Natural History Unit. But, he was not slowing down, as he completed the epic 10-part series for the BBC, The Life of Birds (1998) along with writing and presenting the three-part series State of the Planet (2000) as well as The Life of Mammals (2002). Once broadcast, he began planning his next projects.
He has received honorary degrees from many universities across the world, and is patron or supporter of many charitable organisations, including acting as Patron of the World Land Trust, which buys rain forest and other lands to preserve them and the animals that live there.- David Bowes-Lyon was the sixth son of the ten children of Claude George Bowes-Lyon, 14th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne. His elder sister became Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother.
He was at the Ministry of Economic Warfare in 1940 before moving to the British Embassy in Washington between 1942 and 1944.
In 1929 he married the Grandaughter of William Waldorf Astor, 1st Viscount Astor, the American founder of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, who became a naturalized British subject in 1899. He was created a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order in 1957 by his niece, Queen Elizabeth II without Prime Minister Harold Macmillan's advice. - Prince Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David was born on June 23, 1894. He was the son of the future King George V and Queen Mary. He was in the army and was an uncrowned King for a little under a year after the death of his father in 1936. In the early 30s he met an American divorcee, Wallis Warfield Simpson, who was married to her second husband. She and the Prince fell in love and she got divorced in 1936. The Establishment reacted against the idea of a twice married American divorcée as Queen, and Edward decided to abdicate in favour of his younger brother Albert who became King George VI. He and Wallis married in 1937, and became Duke and Duchess of Windsor, though she was not made a Royal Highness. He met Hitler before the war started and Hitler said that Wallis would have made a good Queen. During the war Edward was named Governor of the Bahamas. After the war he lived mainly in Paris where he died in May of 1972.
- Actor
- Writer
- Music Department
Humph was born on May 23, 1921 in Eton College school, where his father was a housemaster and so he later attended England's most famous public school. During the War, he was an officer in the Grenadier Guards. After discharge, studied for two years at Camberwell Art School. But his love affair with the trumpet, which began in 1936, saw him form his first band in 1948. A 1949 recording contract with EMI was followed by many recordings, including 1956's Bad Penny Blues, the first British jazz record to enter the Top 20. Today Humphrey is busier than ever. His band, one of the most versatile in the world, still tours regularly. He presents The Best of Jazz on BBC Radio 2 and has chaired the hugely popular panel game I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue on Radio 4 for 30 years. His authoritative and exquisitely bored tones lend the half-hour of innuendo and improvised madness an air of gravity. In 1993, Humph was also the recipient of the radio industry's highest honour: The Sony Gold Award. He has also received Lifetime Achievement Awards at both the Post Office British Jazz Awards in April 2000 and at the first BBC Jazz Awards in 2001. To paraphrase Humph at the close of his radio show "all good things must come to an end," and so must this biography.- Producer
- Production Manager
- Additional Crew
A director of Thames Television, Euston Films and Thorn EMI, John Brabourne's entrepreneurial skills were crucial to creating some major successes in the British cinema. In the sixties he produced two celebrated Shakespeare adaptations, the film of Othello (1965) starring Laurence Olivier and Maggie Smith and Franco Zeffirelli's 1968 Romeo and Juliet (1968). He also produced a film version of August Strindberg's The Dance of Death (1969), starring Olivier.
John Ulick Knatchbull, the seventh Baron Brabourne, was born in 1924 and educated at Eton and Brasenose College, Oxford. He succeeded the title when his brother, Norton, was killed in action in 1943. During the war John Brabourne served as an officer in the Coldstream Guards in France. He married Patricia Mountbatten, daughter of Lord Louis Mountbatten, in 1946.
Brabourne began his film career as a production manager on such movies as Pursuit of the Graf Spee (1956) (1956) and he later co-produced the wartime drama Sink the Bismarck! (1960) with Richard Goodwin.
Three years later he and Goodwin set up a consortium to introduce Pay-TV, a cable service whose subscribers would buy films, opera and the arts on meter. The scheme eventually failed and Brabourne and his partners decided to wind up the operation with £1 million losses. "We were years ahead of our time," he said.
Brabourne went on to produce a series of box office hits including Up the Junction (1968), The Tales of Beatrix Potter (1971), Murder on the Orient Express (1974) starring Albert Finney, Death on the Nile (1978) with Peter Ustinov, The Mirror Crack'd (1980) with Elizabeth Taylor, Evil Under the Sun (1982) (1982) again with Ustinov, and Little Dorrit (1987) starring Alec Guinness.
He always described himself as a "creative producer". "I've always been very involved with the directors," he said. "I set out to become a director myself but changed my mind. The things that interested me were the story, which is number one for me, the script, which is certainly number two, and the third really important factor is the editing. I found that, although I like to work with actors, I don't really have a feeling for directing."
He was also a governor of the British Film Institute and was appointed a CBE in 1983 for his services to the film industry.- Born in Melbourne on 12th April, 1930. He was educated at Malvern Grammar School, Geelong Grammar and The University of Melbourne, where he was awarded a Bachelor of Agricultural Science degree in 1954. That year he was expected to be the first person to run a sub-four-minute-mile. He was beaten to it by Roger Bannister but did become the second person a few weeks later, beating Bannister's time and holding the World Record for the next three years.
For 21 years he worked in agricultural research for I.C.I. Australia Ltd., the last 11 years as Research and Development Manager.
He has held many positions with the Commonwealth and State Governments relating to Agriculture, the Environment and Sport.
He met and married Lynne Fisher in Melbourne in 1971 and have two adult children, Matthew and Alison..
He became Governor of Victoria on 1 January 2001. - A teacher in Tennessee, by teaching a theory of evolution he fell foul of the state's education laws. His subsequent trial ("The Scopes Monkey Trial") was the inspiration for the play and the film Inherit the Wind (1960), remade for TV by NBC in 1965. In both versions Dick York played the Scopes character (Bertram Gates). TV has made two other versions of the film.
- Julie's father walked out on the family soon after Julie's birth, Julie took stepfather Bill Goodyear's name. Most famous as Bet Lynch, barmaid landlady of Coronation Street (1960), her stepfather was a publican, and she served behind his bar, The Bay House in Haywood, to raise money for her modelling career dream. After her first failed marriage modelling career took off and led to various bit parts and six-week appearance in Coronation Street as Bet Lynch. During this time she was advised by Patricia Phoenix to get some formal acting training, and so she joined The Oldham Repertory Company. This also lead to a lifelong friendship with Phoenix, which ended only with the latter's death. Following a variety of straight and comic parts on stage and TV she rejoined Coronation Street in a regular role. In 1973 she married company secretary Tony Rudman but the marriage didn't last much longer than the wedding reception and was soon annulled. In 1979 during a routine check up Julie discovered she had cervical cancer and had two operations. In 1985 Julie married airline executive Richard Skrob but because they lived so far apart the marriage ended within two years. Julie formed a charity to finance a smear testing centre in Manchester. She was found not guilty of charge of fraud concerning the charity, and continued to raise money. The Julie Goodyear Laboratory now operates at The Christie Hospital, Manchester. In 1987, Julie left the series for a while to nurse her mother who was dying of terminal cancer. She quit Coronation Street (1960) in October 1995, returning only for a couple of guest appearances.
- Justin Lee 'JLC' Collins is a multi award winning documentary and television presenter known for his long hair and colorful appearance. Born and raised in Bristol, England Justin has a recognizable west country accent. Justin was raised by his father Danny a freelance electrician and his mother Anita, he is an only child.
Justin left Speedwell Technology College at the early age of 15 and started working full time in a warehouse for a supermarket with no qualifications. His father insisted he accept a placement at Filton College to study performing arts, he did and gained a BTEC national diploma.
During his time at Filton College, Justin was given a slot on a small-time local radio station performing sketches and impersonations, The slot was given to him by chance after a prank phone call to the station left the host in fits of laughter.
As a child Justin had a fascination with cult television, and loved shows such as The A-team, Dallas. His Favourite film was Star Wars, and loved the musician Tom Jones. All of which would play a huge part in his future career.
On leaving college Justin was employed as a 'double-glazing' salesman, he would practice stand-up jokes on passers by and use it to make sales. During this job Justin would perform stand up comedy on 'nights' in local clubs, pubs and bars. Eventually winning the best New Comedy act at the Glastonbury festival in 1997 gaining him a place at the BBC New Comedy Awards where he was a finalist.Justin was noticed by a talent scout for MTV during a stand-up gig, and was offered a job presenting a new TV show. Justin officially quit stand-up comedy in 2002 to focus on television and radio.
During 2002, Justin made numerous television shows for MTV and Bravo. He also starred in an advert for UK food snack 'Twiglets'.
In 2003, British 'alternative' radio station XFM hired Justin to host a prime-time show once a week. During which came Justin's first big break in the industry, his talents landed him the opportunity to host BBC's companion show for 'Strictly Come Dancing' a remake of Justin's childhood Favourite TV show. Justin hosted the show for one year, and left XFM in 2005.
From 2005 to present, Justin has continued to present and host popular documentary's, television shows and game-shows. Including his very own Bring back series... in which he tracks down childhood icons from iconic films/shows and reunites them one last time and popular late night comedy 'The Friday night project' in which he co-hosted with award winning comedian Alan Carr.
In 2010, Justin tried to represent the UK in the Eurovision song contest. He was rejected by the BBC. In January he announce that he was going to try to represent Ireland with a song written for him by lead member of the band boy-zone, Ronan Keating. RTE also rejected his attempt. Although the song was not short-listed for entry but was available for sale in the UK charts.
From August 2011 to September 2012 Collins played Dennis Dupree in The West End production of Rock Of Ages along side X factor star Shane Ward.
Collins separated from his wife of 5 years and a relationship with Anna Larke in 2010. They lived together in Kew, London from January to July 2011. In December 2011, Collins was charged with harassment and causing fear of violence, following alleged harassment of Larke. On 9 October 2012, Collins was convicted of harassment causing fear of violence by a majority verdict of the jury. He was sentenced to 140 hours of community service and ordered to pay £3,500 prosecution costs. He did not appeal against his conviction. Following the trial he sought help from a psychotherapist. - Kaiser William II was born on January 27, 1859 to a Prince and Princess of Prussia. His mother was the daughter of Queen Victoria. He grew up like any Prussian Prince, except for an arm that was deformed from birth. He admired his grandparents who became Kaiser and Empress when he was small. He also admired his English Grandmother Queen Victoria as well as Otto von Bismarck. During his formative years he had to deal with having brothers and sisters. His brother Henry even got married to their cousin Irene (their Aunt Alice's daughter). Because of the attention his parents gave to his arm he grew to detest them.
When William was in his late teens he fell in love with his cousin (the daughter of his Aunt Alice) but she did not love him and got married to Grand Duke Serge of Russia. A few years later he got married to a granddaughter of his grandmother's half-sister. They had several children. In 1888 when his father died he raided his desk to find anything that may have incriminated his father in something, but all that was found was papers about how bad he had been in his life. He was with his grandmother Queen Victoria when she died in 1901. Later that year he lost his mother as well. He did the same thing to his mother that he did with his father with the same results. Vickie had given all her papers to the British ambassador to Berlin a few days before she died.
After his mother died he continued to rule Germany in a back handed manner, and did not like the fact that his Uncle Edward was more powerful than he was. He did not like the fact that he was part of starting World War One because it pitted him against cousins, aunts, and uncles all over Europe and the Americas. His response to his cousin changing their last name to Windsor was that he would like to see the Merry Wives of Saxe-Coburg & Gotha. After the war he had to give up his throne and he went to the Netherlands, where after the death of his first wife he married a second. He stayed married to his second wife till he died at the age of 82 in 1941. - Writer
- Actor
Probably best known for his radio shows of the 1960s. "Beyond Our Ken" and "Round the Horne" broke away from staid formulaic comedy shows. The anarchic and risqué sketches pushed censorship to the limits, the collection of writers and performers trained here paved the way to let TV audiences see Monty Python and its worthy, or less worthy, successors. Thanks to Horne, Barry Took and Marty Feldman developed a writing style that brought Britain many of its best film and TV comedies, whilst the comedic timing of Hugh Paddick, Betty Marsden, Bill Pertwee and Kenneth Williams were honed to perfection. His sudden death in 1969 closed a chapter on British Comedy, and he is still sorely missed.- Dr von Dohnanyi was born 23 June 1928 in Hamburg. He is a German politician and a member of the Social Democratic Party (SPD)and is the son of Hans von Dohnanyi and Christine Bonhoeffer, and thus a nephew of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
After studying law at the universities of Munich, Columbia, Stanford and Yale, he started his career working at the Max-Planck-Institute for Civil Law. He then moved to Ford Motor Company, the car manufacturer, working for the company in both Detroit and Cologne where he was head of the Planning Division. From 1960 to 1967 Dohnanyi was a Managing Partner of the Institute for Market Research and Management Consulting in Munich.
In 1969 he was elected to the Bundestag (German Federal Parliament) from the land of Nordrhein-Westfalen and served in the Economics, Education and Science ministries until 1981. That year he was elected First Mayor (prime minister) of his home city of Hamburg. He served two terms as First Mayor, from 24 June 1981 until 8 June 1988.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall and with German unification, Klaus von Dohnanyi became involved with the restructuring programme in East Germany, and from 1993 to 1996 was a special adviser on Market Economy and State to the Board of the Treuhandanstalt and BvS, its successor company, responsible for privatising state-owned companies in the former East Germany. - In 1973 von Beust first entered the Hamburg State Legislature (the "Bürgerschaft") as a member of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU). He left in 1975 to start studying law.
On 31 October 2001 he became Prime Minister of the State of Hamburg, although the City-State calls the post First Mayor (Erster Bürgermeister).
In August 2003 there was a scandal in Hamburg when Beust dismissed his deputy Ronald Schill. Beust later declared the dismissal was necessary, because Schill tried to blackmail him by threatening to make Beust's homosexuality public. In a later interview, Beust's father said that his son is homosexual. Beust himself considers his sexual orientation a private matter.
The Hamburg elections of 29 February, 2004, ended with an unprecedented landslide victory for Ole von Beust and the CDU, with the party achieving absolute majority in the Bürgerschaft. The CDU gained 47.2 percent of the vote, a full 21-point increase from the previous election in September 2001. This was the first time the city has not been governed by a coalition. - He was born in Dublin and educated at Pembroke College, Oxford. During the Second World War, he served in the navy, and afterward worked on the Irish Times (using the pseudonym, "Quidnunc"), Sunday Dispatch and Sunday Times. His books, mostly humorous, included Life in Thin Slices (1954) and How to Become a Scratch Golfer (1963). He was married three times and had one daughter.
Lord Glenavy, who suffered from a serious speech impediment, nevertheless delighted television audiences with his wit, notably as a regular team captain on the long-running Call My Bluff (1965), opposite his longtime friend, Frank Muir. - Paul Eddington was a tall, debonair actor who achieved international success in the 1970s with The Good Life (1975), a popular television series about a young couple farming their backyard in a London suburb. He played the supporting role of neighbor Jerry Leadbetter. It was the hit comedy series Yes Minister (1980), and its sequel Yes, Prime Minister (1986), in the 1980s that brought him television stardom as the inept politician Jim Hacker. The actor's performances as an incompetent government minister were so admired by Margaret Thatcher that she awarded him the honor of Commander of the Order of the British Empire. Despite suffering from skin cancer, he continued to perform on stage and television, concealing his illness, until the tabloid press began suggesting that he had AIDS.
- Actor
- Writer
- Producer
Tod Slaughter took to the stage in 1905 and made a name for himself as the star villain of numerous Victorian melodramas which he toured around England. Many of these were filmed cheaply in the 30s and 40s by quota-quickie tzar George King. His ham performances are perfectly suited to the material and the best of his films give the impression that if the Victorians could have made features they would have looked like this.- Writer
- Camera and Electrical Department
- Editor
Tony Benn is the son, grandson and father of MPs, he retired from the House of Commons in May 2001, after fifty years in Parliament making him the longest serving Labour MP in the history of the party. His service in the House of Commons was not continuous: he lost his Bristol seat in 1983 and was re-elected for Chesterfield in 1984. More famously, he was also excluded in the 1960s when his father died, and he became Viscount Stansgate. He was able to stand in the subsequent by-election but as a member of the House of Lords could not take his seat, and a court declared his opponent the winner. After three years campaigning for the right to renounce his peerage, Benn saw the Peerage Act passed in 1963. He renounced his title within 20 minutes of the act being passed, and the sitting member resigned and Benn returned to the House of Commons in the subsequent by-election. He was a Cabinet minister in the Labour governments of 1964 - 69, and 1974. An elected member of the National Executive Committee of the Labour party from 1959 - 1994, he was Chairman of the Party in 1971/2. His published Diaries in seven volumes cover the period from 1942-1990, and the next volume "Free at Last" from 1990 - 2002 was published on October 3rd 2002. He has also written seven other books, including "Arguments for Socialism", many pamphlets, and several Videos and Audio tapes have also been published. The holder of seven honorary Doctorates from British and American universities, he has recently been appointed as a Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics and is a regular broadcaster. In 1949, he married author and educationalist Caroline Benn, who died in 2000, and they have four children, including the minister Hilary Benn, and ten grandchildren.- Commissioned into the RAF's Accountant Branch as a Pilot Officer on probation with effect from 6 September 1939, several promotions saw him become a Flight Lieutenant (War Substantive) in June 1944, shortly after he was burned. After the war, in July 1945, he became a Squadron Leader and retired from the Emergency List with this ranks in February 1954.
After the war he worked for the Central Electricity Generating Board. He said he often had an empty seat next to him on his train journeys to work as people would move away when the saw his face and hands. He usually then greeted them with "I don't bite, you know"