Dame Edith Evans DBE
Born	Edith Mary Evans (1888-02-08)8 February 1888 London, England, UK
Died	14 October 1976(1976-10-14) (aged 88) Cranbrook, Kent, England, UK
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1910–1976
Spouse	George Booth (1925-1935)

Dame Edith Mary Evans, DBE (8 February 1888 – 14 October 1976) was a British actress.^[1] She was known for her work on the British stage. She also appeared in a number of films, for which she received three Academy Award nominations, plus a BAFTA and a Golden Globe award.

Evans was particularly well known at portraying haughty aristocratic ladies, as in two of her most famous roles: Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest (both on stage and in the 1952 film), and Miss Western in the 1963 film of Tom Jones. By contrast, she played a poverty-stricken old woman in one of her most acclaimed film roles, in The Whisperers (1967).

Theatre[link]

Edith Evans was born in London, the daughter of Edward Evans, a civil servant, and his wife, Caroline Ellen Foster. She was educated at St Michael's Church of England School, Pimlico, before being apprenticed at the age of 15 in 1903 as a milliner.

Her first stage appearance was with Miss Massey's Shakespeare Players in the role of Viola in Twelfth Night in October 1910. In 1912 she was discovered by the noted producer William Poel and made her first professional appearance for Poel in August of that year, playing the role of Gautami in a 6th century Hindu classic, Sakuntala. She received much attention with her performance as Cressida in Troilus and Cressida in London and subsequently at Stratford-upon-Avon.

Her career spanned sixty years during which she played over 150 different roles, in works by Shakespeare, Congreve, Ibsen, Wycherley, Wilde and dramatists of her era including George Bernard Shaw, Enid Bagnold, Christopher Fry and Noël Coward. She created six of Shaw's characters: the Serpent, the Oracle, the She-Ancient, and the Ghost of the Serpent in Back to Methuselah (1923); Orinthia in The Apple Cart (1929); and Epifania in The Millionairess (1940). Other performances which many considered definitive were as Millamant in The Way of the World (1924), Rosalind in As You Like It (1926 and 1936), the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet (1932-35 and 1961), and, most notably, as Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest (1939), a role with which she became identified in the public's mind (in particular for her drippingly sarcastic delivery of the line: "A handbag?"). In 1964 she appeared as Judith Bliss in a revival of Hay Fever by Noël Coward, directed by the playwright himself, for the National Theatre Company at the Old Vic.

Film[link]

Edith Evans had begun her film career in 1915, but was noted mostly for her stage work until she appeared in the 1949 films The Queen of Spades and The Last Days of Dolwyn. She was the Ghost of Christmas Past in the 1970 musical version of Scrooge starring Albert Finney. Edith Evans made her American television debut in 1961 in Jean Anouilh's comedy, Time Remembered with Christopher Plummer.

In 1925, Edith Evans married George (Guy) Booth. He died a decade later from a brain tumour. There were no children of this marriage, and Evans never remarried.

Portraits[link]

Walter Sickert painted Edith Evans as Katharina, the lead character in Shakespeare's romantic comedy, The Taming of the Shrew. Henry Glintenkamp painted Edith Evans in 1922; the portrait was sold as part of her estate at Sotheby's in 1977. A sculpted head of her was for many years on display at the Royal Court Theatre, London.

Edith Evans was created a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 1946. She also received four honorary degrees from the universities of London (1950), Cambridge (1951), Oxford (1954) and Hull (1968).

Her ashes rest at St Paul's, Covent Garden, London. There is a blue plaque outside her house at 109 Ebury Street, London.

Theatre[link]

• 1909-10: Bad Girl of the Family, Grand Theatre, Southampton
• 1912-13: Elizabeth Cooper, Haymarket
• 1917-18: Manfred, Theatre Royal, Drury Lane
• 1919: Merchant of Venice, Royal Court Theatre
• 1920-21: Mother Eve, Ambassadors Theatre
• 1920-21: Witch of Edmonton, Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith
• 1922-23: Rumour, Globe Theatre
• 1923-24: Way of the World, Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith
• 1923-24: Adding Machine, Strand Theatre
• 1924: Midsummer Night’s Dream, Theatre Royal, Drury Lane
• 1924-25: Midsummer Night's Dream, Drury Lane
• 1925: The Painted Swan, Everyman Theatre
• 1925-26: Much Ado About Nothing, Old Vic
• 1925-26: She Stoops To Conquer, Old Vic
• 1925-26: Julius Caesar, Old Vic
• 1925-26: As You Like It, Old Vic
• 1925-26: Romeo and Juliet, Old Vic
• 1925-26: Shoemaker's Holiday, Old Vic
• 1925-26: Taming of the Shrew, Old Vic
• 1925-26: Antony and Cleopatra, Old Vic
• 1925-26: Measure for Measure, Old Vic
• 1925-26: Child in Flanders, Old Vic
• 1925-26: Everyman, Old Vic
• 1925-26: Merchant of Venice, Old Vic
• 1925-26: Richard III, Old Vic
• 1925-26: Merry Wives of Windsor, Old Vic
• 1925-26: Shakespeare Birthday Festival, Old Vic
• 1926-27: Rosmersholm, Kingsway Theatre
• 1927: The Way of the World, Wyndham's Theatre
• 1927-28: Shakespeare Birthday Festival, Old Vic
• 1928-29: Apple Cart, Malvern Theatre, Worcestershire
• 1929-30: Shakespeare Birthday Festival, Old Vic
• 1931: O.H.M.S., Arts Theatre, New Theatre
• 1931-32: Twelfth Night, Old Vic
• 1931-32: Shakespeare Birthday Festival, Old Vic
• 1931-32: Othello, Old Vic
• 1933: The Late Christopher Bean, St.James's Theatre
• 1935-36: Romeo and Juliet, New Theatre
• 1936-37: Taming of The Shrew, New Theatre
• 1936-37: Witch of Edmonton, Old Vic
• 1936-37: As You Like It, Old Vic; New Theatre
• 1936-37: Country Wife, Old Vic
• 1937: The Taming of The Shrew, New Theatre
• 1937-38: Robert's Wife, Globe Theatre
• 1938-39: Importance of Being Earnest, Globe Theatre
• 1939-40: Importance of Being Earnest, Prince's Theatre, Bristol
• 1946: Anthony and Cleopatra, Theatre Royal, Newcastle upon Tyne; Piccadilly Theatre
• 1949: Daphne Loreola, Wyndham's Theatre
• 1951: Waters of the Moon, Theatre Royal, Haymarket
• 1954: The Dark is Light Enough, Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon; Opera House, Manchester; Aldwych Theatre
• 1957: The Chalk Garden, Theatre Royal, Haymarket
• 1962 (4 March): Programme of Poetry and Music, Aldwych
• 1963: Gentle Jack, Queen's Theatre
• 1964: Hay Fever, Old Vic National Theatre
• 1965: The Chinese Prime Minister by Enid Bagnold, Globe Theatre
• 1968 (Feb):Aerial Football and The Black Girl in Search of God, Mermaid Theatre
• 1974: Edith Evans and Friends, Theatre Royal, Haymarket

Filmography[link]

Notes[link]

• 1977 - Ned's Girl by Bryan Forbes, Elm Tree Books

References[link]

External links[link]

Biography portal

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Edith Evans

• Edith Evans at the Internet Movie Database
• Edith Evans at the Internet Broadway Database
• Edith Evans biography and credits at the British Film Institute's Screenonline
• Performances by Edith Evans listed in The Theatre Collection, University of Bristol

Commissioner Catherine Bramwell-Booth CBE, OF, born Catherine Booth Booth (20 July 1883 – 3 October 1987), Salvation Army officer, was one of seven children born to General Bramwell Booth and Florence Eleanor Soper, and was the granddaughter of the Salvation Army's Founder, General William Booth and his wife Catherine Mumford, the 'Mother of the Salvation Army'. In her later years Bramwell-Booth became well-known through her books and various radio and television appearances.^[1] She lived to be 104.

Early years[link]

Part of a series on
The Salvation Army
Background
Christianity · Protestantism Pietism · Anglicanism Arminianism · Methodism Holiness Movement Evangelicalism
Organization
General Chief of the Staff High Council Commissioners Officer · Soldier · Corps
Prominent Salvationists
William Booth Catherine Booth Bramwell Booth Florence Booth Evangeline Booth Ballington Booth Catherine Bramwell-Booth Elijah Cadman Frederick Booth-Tucker Arthur Booth-Clibborn George Scott Railton T. Henry Howard Theodore Kitching Ray Steadman-Allen Eva Burrows
Other topics
Brass Bands Promoted to Glory Order of the Founder Limelight Department Christmas kettle The War Cry Articles of War Reliance Bank
Related organisations
Volunteers of America Skeleton Army The Blind Beggar
Christianity portal
v t e

At birth she was dedicated by her grandfather, General William Booth, and from her infancy she was involved in the demands which the Salvation Army service made upon her parents, being taken with them to their various appointments whenever their busy schedules required it. More settled periods during her childhood were spent at Hadley Wood, which was ‘so perfect that I have never written about it, as no-one would believe me’. Her mother, Florence Eleanor Soper, disapproved of outside influences acting on the tender minds of her children and taught them all herself for two hours every morning.^[1] Her own involvement in Army service began in the Corps at High Barnet, playing in the band and singing trios with her sisters in the open-air meetings. She was sworn-in as a Salvation Army soldier on her 15th birthday and was later given responsibility for the newly-formed 'Band of Love'.

The Salvation Army officer[link]

In her late teens she became aware of the call to officership but her natural shyness made her reluctant to respond; however, eventually realising that God's power would help her, she added her father's Christian name to her surname and entered the Salvation Army Training College at Clapton in 1903, aged 19. She was a lively cadet with a great sense of fun but she also applied herself to training. Later, as a cadet-sergeant, she was remembered for her individual care of cadets.

With her grandfather the General during the 1904 motorcade

Bramwell-Booth was given her first posting in 1904 as a Captain in Bath. She then held appointments in a number of important provincial centres, being placed in charge of the Salvation Army's evangelical work. In 1904 she joined her grandfather, General Booth, as he travelled in a motorcade around the country, preaching from his car in village and town centres. From 1907 to 1917 she was involved in the training of women officers at the Army's International Training College in Clapton in London.^[1]

In 1913 she preached in Russia and in 1917 made headlines when she led a rescue team into the area devastated by the Silvertown TNT explosion at the Brunner-Mond munitions factory in what has become known as the Silvertown explosion, when seventy-three people died and hundreds were injured. Later, she was to be involved with relief work in Europe after both World War I and World War II^[2]

She left the International Training College in 1917 to become the Under Secretary for Europe for Salvation Army work in Europe, being attached to the International Headquarters in London. In 1926 she was promoted to Colonel, and from then until 1946 she was in charge of the Army's social work among women in Great Britain.^[3] In 1927 she was promoted to Commissioner, and became closely involved in the Salvation Army's social welfare activities, dealing with everything from orphaned children to the elderly residents of the Salvation Army eventide homes. From 1946 she was international secretary for Europe until her retirement in 1948.^[1]

Bramwell-Booth was nominated three times for the generalship of the Salvation Army, in 1934, 1939, and 1946. However, on each occasion she was unsuccessful, it possibly being felt that leadership of the Salvation Army should not appear to be exclusive to the Booth 'dynasty', as both her father and aunt Evangeline Booth had previously been Generals.

Later life[link]

Bramwell-Booth wrote several books, including biographies of her grandmother, Catherine Mumford, and of her father Bramwell Booth. This brought her a certain fame, and, because of her engaging personality, during the 1970s and 1980s she made frequent appearances on radio and television programmes, being interviewed by, among others, Malcolm Muggeridge, Russell Harty and Roy Plomley on Desert Island Discs in 1979.^[3] She reached her greatest audience through her appearance on Parkinson, hosted by Michael Parkinson.^[4] In 1971 she was appointed CBE, and in 1977, at the age of 93, as a life long teetotaller, she was delighted to receive the Guild of Professional Toastmasters best speaker award. She was presented with the Humanitarian Award of 1981 by the Variety Clubs International,^[3] and in 1983 was awarded the Salvation Army's prestigious 'Order of the Founder' (OF).^[1]

Bramwell-Booth died at the age of 104 on 4 October 1987 at her home, North Court, in Finchampstead, Berkshire, where she lived with two of her sisters. She never married.

Publications[link]

• Bramwell-Booth, Catherine: 'Bramwell Booth' Pub. by Rich and Cowan, 1933.
• Bramwell-Booth, Catherine: 'Catherine Booth: the Story of Her Loves' Pub. by Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1970.
• Bramwell-Booth, Catherine: 'Fighting for the King' Pub. by Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1983.
• Bramwell-Booth, Catherine: 'Letters: Catherine Bramwell-Booth' Pub. by Lion, 1986.
• Bramwell-Booth, Catherine, with Ted Harrison: 'Commissioner Catherine' Pub. by Darton, Longman and Todd, London, 1983.

Books about Bramwell-Booth[link]

• Batchelor, Mary: 'Catherine Bramwell-Booth' Pub. by Lion, 1986.
• Swift, Catherine M.: 'Catherine Bramwell-Booth' Pub. by Marshall Pickering, 1989.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Bramwell-Booth on the Salvation Army's 'International Heritage' site
• Bramwell-Booth and the Salvation Army
• Bramwell-Booth on SAWiki.net
• Portraits of Bramwell-Booth at the National Portrait Gallery

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. No cleanup reason has been specified. Please help improve this article if you can; the talk page may contain suggestions. (January 2010)

Kenneth Charles Williams (22 February 1926 – 15 April 1988) was an English comic actor and comedian. He was one of the main ensemble in 26 of the Carry On films, and appeared in numerous British television shows, and radio comedies with Tony Hancock and Kenneth Horne.

Life and career[link]

Kenneth Charles Williams was born on 22 February 1926 in Bingfield Street, King's Cross, London,^[1] the son of Louisa ("Lou" or "Louie") and Charles Williams, a barber. Williams had a half-sister, Alice Patricia, born before Louie had met Charlie Williams. He was educated at Lyulph Stanley School, later becoming apprenticed as a draughtsman to a mapmaker. He joined the Army in 1944 at 18. As part of the Royal Engineers survey section in Bombay, he first performed on stage in the Combined Services Entertainment alongside Stanley Baxter and Peter Nichols.^[2] He was a voracious reader able to quote poems or literary extracts from memory. Excerpts from the diaries he kept as an adult show he adored his supportive, theatrical mother but despised his homophobic, morose and selfish father.

Comic performer[link]

His professional career began in 1948 in repertory theatre. Failure to become a serious dramatic actor disappointed him, but his potential as a comic performer gave him his break when he was spotted playing the Dauphin in George Bernard Shaw's St Joan in 1954 by radio producer Dennis Main Wilson. Main Wilson was casting Hancock's Half Hour, a radio series starring Tony Hancock. Playing mostly funny voice roles, Williams stayed in the series almost to the end, five years later.^[3] His nasal, whiny, camp-cockney inflections (epitomised in his "Stop messing about...!" catchphrase) became popular with listeners.^[4] Despite the success and recognition the show brought him, Williams thought theatre, film and television were superior forms of entertainment.

When Hancock moved the show away from what he considered gimmicks and silly voices, Williams had less to do on the programme. Tiring of his reduced status, he joined Kenneth Horne in Beyond Our Ken (1958–1964), and its sequel, Round the Horne (1965–1968). His roles in Round the Horne included Rambling Syd Rumpo, the eccentric folk singer; Dr Chou En Ginsberg, MA (failed), Oriental criminal mastermind; J. Peasemold Gruntfuttock, telephone heavy breather and dirty old man; and Sandy of the camp couple Julian and Sandy (Julian was played by Hugh Paddick). Their double act was notable for double entendres and Polari, the homosexual slang.

Williams appeared in West End revues including Share My Lettuce with Maggie Smith, written by Bamber Gascoigne, and Pieces of Eight with Fenella Fielding. The latter included material written by Peter Cook, then a student at Pembroke College, Cambridge. Cook's One Leg Too Few and Interesting Facts were part of the show and became routines in Cook's own performances. Williams's last revue was One over the Eight, with Sheila Hancock. In 1972, Williams starred opposite Jennie Linden in My Fat Friend. He also appeared with Ingrid Bergman in a stage production of George Bernard Shaw's Captain Brassbound's Conversion in 1971.

[edit] Carry On

Williams worked regularly in British film during the 1960s and 1970s, mainly in the Carry On series (1958–1978) with its British double entendre-laced humour. He appeared in the series more than any other actor.^[5] The films were commercially successful but Williams and the rest of the cast were poorly paid. In his diaries, Williams wrote that he earned more in a British Gas commercial than for any Carry On film. He often criticised Carry On films, his own performances and those of others, considering them beneath him. This was the case with many of the films, television programmes, stage plays and radio shows in which he appeared. He was quick to find fault with his own work. Despite this, he spoke fondly of the Carry On films in interviews. Peter Rogers, producer of the series, recollected, "Kenneth was worth taking care of because, while he cost very little – £5,000 a film, he made a great deal of money for the franchise."^[6]

Radio and television shows[link]

Williams was a regular on the BBC radio panel game Just a Minute from its second season in 1968 until his death. From 1972, when he felt he wasn't being appreciated, he would scream, "I've come all the way from Great Portland Street." (It was a short distance to the studio from his home.) He also talked for almost a minute^[7] about a supposed Austrian psychiatrist called Heinrich Swartzberg, guessing that show creator Ian Messiter had just made the name up.^[8]

On television he was a frequent contributor to the 1973-1974 revival of What's My Line?, hosted the weekly entertainment show International Cabaret and was a reader for the children's story-reading series Jackanory on BBC1. He appeared on Michael Parkinson's chat show on eight occasions, during which he told anecdotes from his career. Williams was a stand-in host on the Wogan talk show in 1986.

Personal life and death[link]

On 14 October 1962, Williams's father, Charlie, was taken to hospital after drinking carbon tetrachloride that had been stored in a cough mixture bottle. Williams refused to visit him, and the following day went out for lunch and then to the cinema. Charlie died that afternoon and, an hour after being informed, Williams went on stage in the West End. The coroner's court recorded a verdict of accidental death due to corrosive poisoning by carbon tetrachloride.^[9]

Several years later Williams turned down work with Orson Welles in America because he did not like the country and had no desire to work there. Many years after his death, The Mail on Sunday, quoting Wes Butters, co-writer of the book Kenneth Williams Unseen: The Private Notes, Scripts And Photographs, claimed Williams had been denied a visa because Scotland Yard considered him a suspect in his father's death.^[10]

Williams insisted that he was celibate, and his diaries substantiate his claims – at least from his early 40s onwards. He lived alone all his adult life and had few close companions apart from his mother, and no romantic relationships of significance. His diaries contain references to unconsummated or barely consummated homosexual dalliances, which he describes as "traditional matters" or "tradiola" (since male homosexual activity was a criminal offence in the UK before 1967, outright admission would have been held against him if anyone had read the diaries). He befriended gay playwright Joe Orton, who wrote the role of Inspector Truscott in Loot (1966) for him, and had holidays with Orton and his lover, Kenneth Halliwell, in Morocco. Other friends included Stanley Baxter, Gordon Jackson and his wife Rona Anderson, Sheila Hancock, Maggie Smith and her playwright husband, Beverley Cross.^[11]

Williams lived in a succession of small rented flats in North London from the mid-1950s. After his father died, his mother, Louisa, lived close by him and, finally, in the flat next to his. His last home was a flat on Osnaburgh Street, now demolished. Williams was fond of fellow Carry On regulars Barbara Windsor, Kenneth Connor, Hattie Jacques, Joan Sims (whom he once proposed marriage to but she rejected it) and Bernard Bresslaw.^{[citation needed]}

Williams rarely revealed details of his private life, though he spoke openly to Owen Spencer-Thomas about his loneliness, despondency and sense of underachievement in two half-hour documentary programmes entitled Carry On Kenneth on BBC Radio London.^[12] In later years his health declined, along with that of his elderly mother, and his depression deepened. He died on 15 April 1988 in his flat;^[13] the cause of death was an overdose of barbiturates.^[14] An inquest recorded an open verdict, as it was not possible to establish whether his death was a suicide or an accident.^[15] His diaries reveal he had often had suicidal thoughts and as far back as his earliest diaries he noted there were times when he could not see any point in existence. His authorised biography argues that Williams did not take his own life but died of an accidental overdose. The actor had doubled his dosage of antacid without discussing this with his doctor, which, combined with the aforementioned mixture of medication, is the widely accepted cause of death. He had a stock of painkilling tablets and it is argued that he would have taken more of them if he had been intending suicide.^[16]

His mother died in July 1991 and his half-sister, Pat, died in 1994.^{[citation needed]}

Legacy[link]

Diaries and biographies[link]

Posthumous publication of his diaries and letters, edited by Russell Davies, caused controversy—particularly Williams's caustic remarks about fellow professionals—and revealed bouts of despair, often primed by feelings of personal isolation and professional failure. Williams wrote his diaries from the age of 14 in 1940 until his death 48 years later, although the earliest to survive to publication was for 1942 when he reached 16. Williams kept pocket-sized diaries for 1942 and 1947 (he kept no diaries for 1943 to 1946 as he was touring the Far East in the army); a desk diary for 1948; pocket-sized diaries for 1949 and 1950; desk diaries for 1951 to 1965; standard edition desk diaries for 1966 to 1971, and finally A4-sized executive desk diaries for 1972 to 1988. He claimed that writing in his diaries eased the loneliness he often felt.

In April 2008, BBC Radio 4 broadcast the two-part The Pain of Laughter: The Last Days of Kenneth Williams.^[17] The programmes were researched and written by Wes Butters and narrated by Rob Brydon. Butters purchased a collection of Williams's personal belongings from the actor's godson, Robert Chidell, to whom they had been bequeathed.^[18]

The first of the programmes said that, towards the end of his life and struggling with depression and ill health, Williams abandoned Christian faith following discussions with the poet Philip Larkin. Williams had been a Methodist, though he spent much of his life struggling with Christianity's teachings on homosexuality.^[17]

Kenneth Williams Unseen by Wes Butters and Russell Davies, the first Williams biography in 15 years, was published in October 2008.^[19]

An authorised biography, Born Brilliant: The Life Of Kenneth Williams, by Christopher Stevens,^[20] was published in October 2010. This drew for the first time on the full Williams archive of diaries and letters, which had been stored in a London bank for 15 years following publication of edited extracts.^[21] The biography said Williams used a variety of handwriting styles and colours in his journals, switching between different hands on the page.^[22]

Portrayals[link]

Williams' blue plaque at 57 Marchmont Street

Williams has been portrayed in two made-for-television films. In 2000, Adam Godley played him in the story of Sid James and Barbara Windsor's love affair, Cor, Blimey! (Godley had originated the role in the 1998 National Theatre play Cleo, Camping, Emmanuelle and Dick on which Cor Blimey! was based). Subsequently in 2006, Michael Sheen played him in the BBC Four drama Kenneth Williams: Fantabulosa!.

David Benson's 1996 Edinburgh Fringe show, Think No Evil of Us: My Life with Kenneth Williams, saw Benson playing Williams; after touring, the show ran in London's West End. Benson reprised his performance at the 2006 Edinburgh Fringe and continues to tour.^[23]

From 2003 to 2005, Robin Sebastian took on Williams in the West End stage show Round the Horne... Revisited, recreating his performance in 2008 for a production called Round the Horne: Unseen and Uncut.

Recognition[link]

The flat Williams had lived in on Osnaburgh Street from 1972 until his death was bought by Rob Brydon and Julia Davis for the writing of their comedy series Human Remains. The building was demolished in May 2007.^[24]

The English singer-songwriter John Howard's song "Who's Listening? (For Kenneth Williams)" appeared on Howard's 2007 album Barefoot with Angels.^[25] In 2011, Howard wrote:

This wasn't written about Kenneth Williams per se, but, after I'd composed it and was playing it through, I realised the lyric sort of summed Kenneth up − I think I'd recently been reading his published Diaries and I had ended the song with the same words Williams had written in his diary before he died. The dichotomy of the man was fascinating, how he was everyone's camp comedic hero but yearned to be taken seriously as an actor; hated the Carry Ons but couldn't escape them; had a kind of self-loathing but also found himself beautiful. His friendship with the louche Joe Orton also seemed out of step with his image of every housewife's favourite funny man. The character in the lyric of "Who's Listening?" is similarly hard to weigh up, so I decided to dedicate the song to Kenneth. My partner was in a play with him in the '70s and said he was a lovely man, very generous with friends and generous with fellow actors on stage as well. But a very complex character.^[26]

Williams is commemorated by a blue plaque at the address of his father's barber shop in Marchmont Street, London, where he lived from 1935 to 1956. The plaque was unveiled on 11 October 2009 by Bill Pertwee and Nicholas Parsons, with whom Williams performed.^[27]

In September 2010, a plaque commissioned by the British Comedy Society was unveiled in the foyer of the New Diorama Theatre by the Mayor of Camden accompanied by David Benson, the actor known for his performances of his own work dedicated to Williams, Think No Evil of Us - My Life With Kenneth Williams. The theatre stands in the Regents Place development, site of the demolished Osnaburgh Street.

Performances[link]

Films[link]

Albums[link]

• Kenneth Williams on Pleasure Bent 1967, Decca LK 4856. Music by Ted Dicks, lyrics by Myles Rudge. Arrangements and musical direction by Barry Booth, sound supervision by Roger Cameron.
• The World of Kenneth Williams 1970, Decca SPA 64. Stereo edition of recordings from the 1950s and 1960s.

Footnotes[link]

References[link]

• Williams, Kenneth (1993), Russell Davies, ed. The Kenneth Williams Diaries. London: HarperCollins.

External links[link]

• Kenneth Williams at the Internet Movie Database
• Kenneth Williams at the British Film Institute's Screenonline
• Kenneth Williams at Find a Grave

Sir Michael Redgrave
Portrait of Redgrave taken by Allan Warren in 1978
Born	Michael Scudamore Redgrave (1908-03-20)20 March 1908 Bristol, Gloucestershire, England
Died	21 March 1985(1985-03-21) (aged 77) Denham, Buckinghamshire, England
Cause of death	Parkinson's disease
Nationality	British
Alma mater	Magdalene College, Cambridge
Years active	1936-75
Spouse	Rachel Kempson (m. 1935-85; his death)
Children	Vanessa Redgrave Corin Redgrave (deceased) Lynn Redgrave (deceased)
Parents	Roy Redgrave Margaret Scudamore

Sir Michael Scudamore Redgrave, CBE (20 March 1908 – 21 March 1985) was an English stage and film actor, director, manager and author.

Youth and education[link]

Redgrave was born in Bristol, Gloucestershire, England, the son of the silent film actor Roy Redgrave and the actress Margaret Scudamore. He never knew his father, who left when Michael was only six months old to pursue a career in Australia. His mother subsequently married Captain James Anderson, a tea planter, but Redgrave greatly disliked his stepfather.^[1]

He studied at Clifton College and Magdalene College, Cambridge. He was a schoolmaster at Cranleigh School in Surrey before becoming an actor in 1934. There he directed the boys in Hamlet, King Lear and The Tempest, but managed to play all the leading roles himself.^[2] The 'Redgrave Room' at the school was later named after him. In the new Guildford School of Acting building which opened in January 2010, there is the Sir Michael Redgrave studio.

Theatre career[link]

Redgrave made his first professional appearance at the Liverpool Playhouse on 30 August 1934 as Roy Darwin in Counsellor-at-Law (by Elmer Rice), then spent two years with its Liverpool Repertory Company where he met his future wife Rachel Kempson. They married on 18 July 1935.

1930s[link]

Offered a job by Tyrone Guthrie, he made his first professional appearance in London at the Old Vic on 14 September 1936, playing Ferdinand in Love's Labours Lost. During 1936-37 he also played Mr Horner in The Country Wife, Orlando in As You Like It, Warbeck in The Witch of Edmonton and Laertes to Laurence Olivier's Hamlet. His hit of the season was Orlando. Edith Evans was his Rosalind and the two fell very much in love. As he later explained: "Edith always had a habit of falling in love with her leading men; with us it just went rather further."^[3] As You Like It transferred to the New Theatre in February 1937 when he again played Orlando.

At the Embassy Theatre in March 1937 he played Anderson in a mystery play, The Bat, before returning to the Old Vic in April, succeeding Marius Goring as Chorus in Henry V. Other roles that year included Christopher Drew in Daisy Fisher's comedy A Ship Comes Home at the St Martin's Theatre in May and Larry Starr in Philip Leaver's comedy Three Set Out at the Embassy in June, before joining John Gielgud's Company at the Queen's Theatre, September 1937 to April 1938, where he played Bolingbroke in Richard II, Charles Surface in The School for Scandal and Baron Tusenbach in Three Sisters.

Other roles included:

• Alexei Turbin in The White Guard (The Days of the Turbins by Mikhail Bulgakov), Phoenix Theatre October 1938
• Sir Andrew Aguecheek in Twelfth Night, Phoenix December 1938
• Harry, Lord Monchesney in The Family Reunion (T S Eliot), Westminster Theatre March 1939
• Henry in Springtime for Henry, touring 1939

Second World War[link]

Once the London theatres were re-opened, after the outbreak of war, he played:

• Captain Macheath in The Beggar's Opera, Theatre Royal, Haymarket, March 1940
• Charleston in Thunder Rock (Robert Ardrey), Neighbourhood Theatre June 1940; Globe Theatre July 1940

Redgrave joined the Royal Navy as an ordinary seaman in July 1941, but was discharged on medical grounds in November 1942. Having spent most of 1942 in the Reserve he managed to direct Lifeline (Norman Armstrong) starring Frank Pettingell at the Duchess Theatre in July; and The Duke in Darkness (Patrick Hamilton) starring Leslie Banks at the St James's Theatre in October, also taking the role of Gribaux.^[4]

Resuming his stage career he played/directed:

• Rakitin in A Month in the Country (Turgenev), St James's Theatre March 1943
• Lafont in six matinees of Parisienne, a comedy by Henry Becque, translated by Ashley Dukes, (Redgrave also directed and managed) co-starring Sonia Dresdel, St James's Theatre June 1943
• Blow Your Own Trumpet, a comedy by Peter Ustinov, (directed), Playhouse Theatre August 1943
• The Wingless Victory, a period romance by Maxwell Anderson, (directed) starring Rachel Kempson as Faith Ingalls, Phoenix Theatre September 1943
• Harry Quincey in Uncle Harry, a thriller by Thomas Job, (also co-directed with William Armstrong) with Beatrix Lehmann as Leslie Quincey and Rachel Kempson as Lucy Forrest, Garrick Theatre March 1944
• Colonel Stjerbinsky in Jacobowsky and the Colonel, a comedy by Franz Werfel, adapted by S N Behrman, (Redgrave also directed) with Rachel Kempson as Marianne, Piccadilly Theatre, June 1945

Post-war years[link]

• Title role in Macbeth, Aldwych Theatre December 1947; National Theater, New York (NY debut, with Flora Robson as Lady Macbeth) 31 March 1948
• Captain in The Father (August Strindberg) directed by Dennis Arundell with Freda Jackson as Laura, Embassy Theatre November 1948; and Duchess Theatre January 1949
• Etienne in A Woman in Love (also co-adapted with Diana Gould and directed) with Margaret Rawlings as Germaine, Embassy April 1949

Joining the Old Vic Company at the New Theatre for its 1949–50 season, he played:

• Berowne in Love's Labours Lost
• Marlow in She Stoops to Conquer
• Rakitin in A Month in the Country
• His first Hamlet, which he also played at the Zurich Festival, the Holland Festival and at Kronborg Castle in Elsinore, June 1950

1950s[link]

Redgrave joined the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre company at Stratford-upon-Avon and for the 1951 season appeared as Prospero in The Tempest as well as playing Richard II, Hotspur and Chorus in the Cycle of Histories, for which he also directed Henry IV Part Two. After appearing as Frank Elgin in Winter Journey at the St James's April 1952, he rejoined the Stratford company in 1953 (together with his actress wife Rachel Kempson) appearing as Shylock, King Lear and Antony in Antony and Cleopatra, also playing Antony when the company transferred to the Prince's Theatre in November 1953 before touring in the Netherlands, Belgium and Paris.^{[citation needed]}

At the Apollo in June 1955 he played Hector in Tiger at the Gates, appearing in the same role at the Plymouth Theatre, New York in October 1955 for which he received the New York Critics' Award. While in New York he directed A Month in the Country at the Phoenix Theatre in April 1956, and directed and played the Prince Regent in The Sleeping Prince at the Coronet Theatre in November 1956.

Returning to London in January 1958 he appeared as Philip Lester in A Touch of the Sun (N. C. Hunter) at the Saville Theatre — Best Actor in the Evening Standard Awards 1958 — before rejoining the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre Company in June 1958, to play Hamlet and Benedick, also playing Hamlet with the company in Leningrad and Moscow in December 1958 (while his wife Rachel Kempson played Ursula in Much Ado About Nothing and Lady Capulet in Romeo and Juliet).

At the Queen's Theatre in London in August 1959 he played H.J. in his own adaptation of the Henry James novella The Aspern Papers. His play was later to be successfully revived on Broadway in 1962, with Dame Wendy Hiller and Maurice Evans, while the 1984 London revival featured his daughter, Vanessa Redgrave, along with Christopher Reeve and Hiller, this time in the role of Miss Bordereau.

1960s[link]

Roles included:

• Jack Dean in The Tiger and the Horse by Robert Bolt (which Redgrave also co-presented, directed by Frith Banbury), Queen's Theatre August 1960
• Victor Rhodes in The Complaisant Lover by Graham Greene, Ethel Barrymore Theatre, New York, November 1961 - 101 performances

Michael Redgrave in costume for lead role in Uncle Vanya, backstage at Chichester Festival Theatre, 1962. Photo: Tony French.

Returning to England, in July 1962 he took part in the Chichester Festival Theatre's opening season, playing the title role in Chekhov's Uncle Vanya to the Astrov of Laurence Olivier who also directed.

Alongside John Dexter's Chichester staging of Saint Joan, Olivier's Uncle Vanya was first revived in Chichester in 1963 before transferring to the Old Vic as part of the nascent Royal National Theatre's inaugural season, winning rave reviews and Redgrave's second win as Best Actor in the 1963 Evening Standard Awards. Critic Michael Billington recalled: "In Redgrave's Vanya you saw both a tremulous victim of a lifetime's emotional repression and the wasted potential of a Chekhovian might-have-been: as Redgrave and Olivier took their joint curtain call, linked hands held triumphantly aloft, we were not to know that this was to symbolise the end of their artistic amity."^[5]

Redgrave played (and co-presented) Lancelot Dodd MA in Arthur Watkyn's Out of Bounds at Wyndham's Theatre in November 1962, following it at the Old Vic with his portrayal of Claudius opposite the Hamlet of Peter O'Toole in 22 October 1963. This Hamlet was in fact the National Theatre's official opening production, directed by Olivier, but Simon Callow has dubbed it "slow, solemn, long", while Ken Campbell vividly described it as "brochure theatre."^[6]

In January 1964 at the National he played the title role in Hobson's Choice, which he admitted was well outside his range: "I couldn't do the Lancashire accent and that shook my nerve terribly - all the other performances suffered." While still at the National in June 1964 he also played Halvard Solness in The Master Builder, which he said 'went wrong'. At this time he had incipient Parkinson's disease, although he did not know it.^[2]

In May and June 1965 Redgrave directed the opening festival of the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre in Guildford, including directing and playing Rakitin in A Month in the Country (co-starring with Ingrid Bergman as Natalya Petrovna), and Samson in Samson Agonistes (co-starring with Rachel Kempson as Chorus). He again played Rakitin in September 1965, when his production transferred to the Cambridge Theatre in London. For the Glyndebourne Festival Opera he directed Werther in 1966 and La Boheme in 1967.^{[citation needed]}

1970s[link]

At the Mermaid Theatre in July 1971 he played Mr Jaraby in The Old Boys (William Trevor) and had an unfortunate experience: "My memory went, and on the first night they made me wear a deaf aid to hear some lines from the prompter and it literally fell to pieces - there were little bits of machinery all over the floor, so I then knew I really couldn't go on, at least not learning new plays."^[2]

Nevertheless, he successfully took over the part of Father in John Mortimer's A Voyage Round My Father at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, also touring Canada and Australia in the role in 1972-73. International touring continued in 1974-75 with a Royal Shakespeare Company production of The Hollow Crown, visiting major venues in the US and Australia, while in 1976-77 he toured South America, Canada and the UK in the anthology, Shakespeare's People.

Redgrave's final theatre appearance came in May 1979 when he portrayed Jasper in Simon Gray's Close of Play, directed on the Lyttelton stage at the National Theatre by Harold Pinter. It was a silent, seated role, based on Gray's own father, who had died a year before he wrote the play. As Gray has said: "Jasper is in fact dead but is forced to endure, as if alive, a traditional English Sunday, helpless in his favourite armchair as his three sons and their wives fall to pieces in the usual English middle class style, sometimes blaming him, sometimes appealing to him for help and sobbing at his feet for forgiveness, but basically ignoring him. In other words I had stuck him in Hell, which turns out to be 'life, old life itself'."^[7]

His final work, in 1975, a narrative of the epic poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a poem that Redgrave taught as a young schoolmaster and visualized by producer-director Raul da Silva, received six international film festival prizes of which five were first place in category. This work was to be his last before the onslaught of Parkinson's disease.^{[citation needed]}

Film and television work[link]

Redgrave first appeared on BBC television at the Alexandra Palace in 1937, in scenes from Romeo and Juliet. His first major film role was in Alfred Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes (1938). Redgrave also starred in The Stars Look Down (1939), with James Mason in the film of Robert Ardrey's play Thunder Rock (1942), and in the ventriloquist's dummy episode of the Ealing compendium film Dead of Night (1945).

His first American film role was opposite Rosalind Russell in Mourning Becomes Electra (1947), for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor. In 1951 he starred in The Browning Version, from Terence Rattigan's play of the same name. The Daily Mirror described Redgrave's performance as Crocker-Harris as "one of the greatest performances ever seen in films".^[8] The 1950s also saw Redgrave in The Importance of Being Earnest (1952), The Dambusters (1954), 1984 (1956), and The Quiet American (1958).

Notable television performances include voice-overs for The Great War (1964), a history of the First World War using stills and 'stretched' archive film, and the less successful Lost Peace series (BBC Television, 1964 and 1966). Of the latter, Philip Purser wrote: "The commentary, spoken by Sir Michael Redgrave, took on an unremittingly pessimistic tone from the outset."^[9]

Last years and death[link]

Redgrave died in a nursing home in Denham, Buckinghamshire, in 1985, from Parkinson's disease, one day after his 77th birthday.

Personal life[link]

Family[link]

Redgrave was married to the actress Rachel Kempson for 50 years from 1935 until his death. Their children Vanessa (b. 1937), Corin (1939–2010) and Lynn Redgrave (1943–2010) and their grandchildren - Natasha (1963–2009), Joely Richardson (b. 1965) and Jemma are also involved in theatre or film as actors. His grandson Carlo Gabriel Nero is a screenwriter and film director whilst Luke Redgrave is not connected to acting.

His daughter Lynn created a one-woman play for herself called Shakespeare for My Father, in which she was nominated for Broadway's Tony Award, in which she traced her love for Shakespeare as a way of following and finding her often absent father.^{[citation needed]}

Redgrave owned White Roding Windmill from 1937 to 1946.^[10] He and his family lived in "Bedford House" on Chiswick Mall from 1945 to 1954.^[11] His entry for Who's Who in the Theatre (1981) gives his address as Wilks Water, Odiham, Hampshire.

Bisexuality[link]

Corin helped his father in the writing of his last autobiography. During one of Corin's visits to his father, the latter said, "There is something I ought to tell you". Then, after a very long pause, "I am, to say the least of it, bisexual". Corin encouraged him to acknowledge his bisexuality in the book. Michael agreed to do so, but in the end he chose to remain silent about it.^{[citation needed]} Alan Strachan's 2004 biography of Redgrave discusses his affairs with both men and women. ^[12]

The 1996 BBC documentary film Michael Redgrave: My Father, narrated by Corin Redgrave, and based on his book of the same name, discusses Michael's bisexuality in some depth.^{[citation needed]} Rachel Kempson recounted that, when she proposed to him, Redgrave said that there were "difficulties to do with his nature, and that he felt he ought not to marry". She said that she understood, it didn't matter and that she loved him.^[13] To this, Redgrave replied, "Very well. If you're sure, we will".^{[citation needed]}

During the filming of Fritz Lang's Secret Beyond the Door (1948), Redgrave met Bob Michell. They became lovers, Michell set up house close to the Redgraves, and he became a surrogate "uncle" to Redgrave's children (then aged 11, 9 and 5), who adored him. Michell later had children of his own, including a son he named Michael.^{[citation needed]}

A card was found among Redgrave's effects after his death. The card was signed "Tommy, Liverpool, January 1940", and on it were the words (quoted from W. H. Auden): "The world is love. Surely one fearless kiss would cure the million fevers".^{[citation needed]}

Honours, awards and appointments[link]

Redgrave twice (1958 and 1963) won Best Actor trophies in the Evening Standard Awards and twice received the Variety Club of Great Britain 'Actor of the Year' Award (in the same years).

He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1952 and was knighted in 1959. He was also appointed Commander of the Order of the Dannebrog, Denmark in 1955.

Redgrave became the First President of the English Speaking Board in 1953, and President of the Questors Theatre, Ealing in 1958.

In 1966 he received an honorary DLitt degree from the University of Bristol.

The Redgrave Theatre in Farnham, Surrey, 1974–1998, was named in his honour.

Filmography[link]

Writings[link]

Redgrave wrote four books:

• The Actor's Ways and Means Heinemann (1953)
• Mask or Face: Reflections in an Actor's Mirror Heinemann (1958)
• The Mountebank's Tale Heinemann (1959)
• In My Mind's I: An Actor's Autobiography Viking (1983) ISBN 0-670-14233-6

His plays include The Seventh Man and Circus Boy, both performed at the Liverpool Playhouse in 1935, and his adaptations of A Woman in Love (Amourese) at the Embassy Theatre in 1949 and the Henry James novella The Aspern Papers at the Queen's Theatre in 1959.

Box Office Ranking[link]

For a number of years, British film exhibitors voted him among the top ten British stars at the box office via an annual poll in the Motion Picture Herald.

• 1946 - 4th^[14]
• 1951 - 9th^[15]
• 1955 - 8th^[16]

Further reading[link]

• Who's Who in the Theatre 17th edition, Gale (1981) ISBN 0-8103-0235-7
• Theatre Record and its annual Indexes
• The Great Stage Stars by Sheridan Morley, Angus & Robertson (1986) ISBN 0-207-14970-4

References[link]

External links[link]

• Michael Redgrave at the Internet Broadway Database
• Michael Redgrave at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
• Michael Redgrave at the Internet Movie Database
• Michael Redgrave at the British Film Institute's Screenonline

This article's citation style may be unclear. The references used may be made clearer with a different or consistent style of citation, footnoting, or external linking. (September 2009)

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson
Born	(1832-01-27)27 January 1832 Daresbury, Halton, Cheshire, England
Died	14 January 1898(1898-01-14) (aged 65) Guildford, Surrey, England
Pen name	Lewis Carroll
Occupation	Author, mathematician, Anglican cleric, photographer, artist
Nationality	British
Genres	Children's literature, fantasy literature, poetry, literary nonsense
Notable work(s)	Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking-Glass, "The Hunting of the Snark", "Jabberwocky"

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson ( /ˈtʃɑrlz ˈlʌtwɪdʒ ˈdɒdʒsən/ CHARLZ LUDT-wij DOJ-sən;^[1][2] 27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898), better known by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll (/ˈkærəl/ KARR-əl), was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, as well as the poems "The Hunting of the Snark" and "Jabberwocky", all examples of the genre of literary nonsense. He is noted for his facility at word play, logic, and fantasy, and there are societies dedicated to the enjoyment and promotion of his works and the investigation of his life in many parts of the world, including the United Kingdom, Japan, the United States, and New Zealand.

Antecedents[link]

Dodgson's family was predominantly northern English, with Irish connections. Conservative and High Church Anglican, most of Dodgson's ancestors were army officers or Church of England clergy. His great-grandfather, also named Charles Dodgson, had risen through the ranks of the church to become the Bishop of Elphin.^[3] His grandfather, another Charles, had been an army captain, killed in action in Ireland in 1803 when his two sons were hardly more than babies.^[4] His mother's name was Frances Jane Lutwidge.^[5]

The elder of these sons – yet another Charles Dodgson – was Carroll's father. He reverted to the other family tradition and took holy orders. He went to Westminster School, and then to Christ Church, Oxford. He was mathematically gifted and won a double first degree, which could have been the prelude to a brilliant academic career. Instead he married his first cousin in 1827 and became a country parson.^[6]

Dodgson was born in the little parsonage of Daresbury in Cheshire near the towns of Warrington and Runcorn,^[7] the eldest boy but already the third child of the four-and-a-half-year-old marriage. Eight more children were to follow. When Charles was 11, his father was given the living of Croft-on-Tees in North Yorkshire, and the whole family moved to the spacious rectory. This remained their home for the next twenty-five years.

Young Charles' father was an active and highly conservative cleric of the Church of England who later became the Archdeacon of Richmond^[8] and involved himself, sometimes influentially, in the intense religious disputes that were dividing the church. He was High Church, inclining to Anglo-Catholicism, an admirer of John Henry Newman and the Tractarian movement, and did his best to instill such views in his children. Young Charles was to develop an ambiguous relationship with his father's values and with the Church of England as a whole.^[9]

Education[link]

Home life[link]

During his early youth, Dodgson was educated at home. His "reading lists" preserved in the family archives testify to a precocious intellect: at the age of seven the child was reading The Pilgrim's Progress. He also suffered from a stammer – a condition shared by most of his siblings^[10] – that often influenced his social life throughout his years. At age twelve he was sent to Richmond Grammar School (now part of Richmond School) at nearby Richmond.

Rugby[link]

In 1846, young Dodgson moved on to Rugby School, where he was evidently less happy, for as he wrote some years after leaving the place:

I cannot say ... that any earthly considerations would induce me to go through my three years again ... I can honestly say that if I could have been ... secure from annoyance at night, the hardships of the daily life would have been comparative trifles to bear.^[11]

Scholastically, though, he excelled with apparent ease. "I have not had a more promising boy at his age since I came to Rugby", observed R.B. Mayor, then Mathematics master.^[12]

Oxford[link]

He left Rugby at the end of 1849 and matriculated at Oxford in May 1850 as a member of his father's old college, Christ Church.^[13] After waiting for rooms in college to become available, he went into residence in January 1851.^[14] He had been at Oxford only two days when he received a summons home. His mother had died of "inflammation of the brain" – perhaps meningitis or a stroke – at the age of forty-seven.^[14]

His early academic career veered between high promise and irresistible distraction. He did not always work hard, but was exceptionally gifted and achievement came easily to him. In 1852 he obtained first-class honours in Mathematics Moderations, and was shortly thereafter nominated to a Studentship by his father's old friend, Canon Edward Pusey.^[15][16] In 1854 he obtained first-class honours in the Final Honours School of Mathematics, graduating Bachelor of Arts.^[17] He remained at Christ Church studying and teaching, but the next year he failed an important scholarship through his self-confessed inability to apply himself to study.^[18][19] Even so, his talent as a mathematician won him the Christ Church Mathematical Lectureship in 1855,^[20] which he continued to hold for the next twenty-six years.^[21] Despite early unhappiness, Dodgson was to remain at Christ Church, in various capacities, until his death.^[22]

Character and appearance[link]

Health challenges[link]

The young adult Charles Dodgson was about six feet tall, slender, and had curling brown hair and blue or grey eyes (depending on the account). He was described in later life as somewhat asymmetrical, and as carrying himself rather stiffly and awkwardly, though this may be on account of a knee injury sustained in middle age. As a very young child, he suffered a fever that left him deaf in one ear. At the age of seventeen, he suffered a severe attack of whooping cough, which was probably responsible for his chronically weak chest in later life. Another defect he carried into adulthood was what he referred to as his "hesitation", a stammer he acquired in early childhood and which plagued him throughout his life.^[23]

The stammer has always been a potent part of the conceptions of Dodgson; it is part of the belief that he stammered only in adult company and was free and fluent with children, but there is no evidence to support this idea.^[24] Many children of his acquaintance remembered the stammer while many adults failed to notice it. Dodgson himself seems to have been far more acutely aware of it than most people he met; it is said he caricatured himself as the Dodo in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, referring to his difficulty in pronouncing his last name, but this is one of the many "facts" often-repeated, for which no firsthand evidence remains. He did indeed refer to himself as the dodo, but that this was a reference to his stammer is simply speculation.^[22]

Although Dodgson's stammer troubled him, it was never so debilitating that it prevented him from applying his other personal qualities to do well in society. At a time when people commonly devised their own amusements and when singing and recitation were required social skills, the young Dodgson was well-equipped to be an engaging entertainer. He reportedly could sing tolerably well and was not afraid to do so before an audience. He was adept at mimicry and storytelling, and was reputedly quite good at charades.^[23]

Social connections[link]

In the interim between his early published writing and the success of the Alice books, Dodgson began to move in the Pre-Raphaelite social circle. He first met John Ruskin in 1857 and became friendly with him. He developed a close relationship with Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his family, and also knew William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, and Arthur Hughes, among other artists. He also knew the fairy-tale author George MacDonald well – it was the enthusiastic reception of Alice by the young MacDonald children that convinced him to submit the work for publication.^[23][25]

Politics, religion and philosophy[link]

In broad terms, Dodgson has traditionally been regarded as politically, religiously, and personally conservative. Martin Gardner labels Dodgson as a Tory who was "awed by lords and inclined to be snobbish towards inferiors."^[26] The Revd W. Tuckwell, in his Reminiscences of Oxford (1900), regarded him as "austere, shy, precise, absorbed in mathematical reverie, watchfully tenacious of his dignity, stiffly conservative in political, theological, social theory, his life mapped out in squares like Alice's landscape."^[27] However, Dodgson also expressed interest in philosophies and religions that seem at odds with this assessment. For example, he was a founding member of the Society for Psychical Research.^[28][29] It has been argued by the proponents of the 'Carroll Myth' that these factors require a reconsideration of Gardner's diagnosis, and that perhaps, Dodgson's true outlook was more complex than previously believed (see 'the Carroll Myth' below).^{[citation needed]}

Dodgson wrote some studies of various philosophical arguments. In 1895, he developed a philosophical regressus-argument on deductive reasoning in his article "What the Tortoise Said to Achilles", which appeared in one of the early volumes of the philosophical journal Mind. The article was reprinted in the same journal a hundred years later, in 1995, with a subsequent article by Simon Blackburn titled Practical Tortoise Raising.^[30]

Artistic activities[link]

Literature[link]

From a young age, Dodgson wrote poetry and short stories, both contributing heavily to the family magazine Mischmasch and later sending them to various magazines, enjoying moderate success. Between 1854 and 1856, his work appeared in the national publications, The Comic Times and The Train, as well as smaller magazines like the Whitby Gazette and the Oxford Critic. Most of this output was humorous, sometimes satirical, but his standards and ambitions were exacting. "I do not think I have yet written anything worthy of real publication (in which I do not include the Whitby Gazette or the Oxonian Advertiser), but I do not despair of doing so some day," he wrote in July 1855.^[23] Sometime after 1850, he did write puppet plays for his siblings' entertainment, of which one has survived, La Guida di Bragia.^[31]

In 1856 he published his first piece of work under the name that would make him famous. A romantic poem called "Solitude" appeared in The Train under the authorship of "Lewis Carroll." This pseudonym was a play on his real name; Lewis was the anglicised form of Ludovicus, which was the Latin for Lutwidge, and Carroll an Irish surname similar to the Latin name Carolus, from which the name Charles comes.^[6]

[edit] Alice

"The chief difficulty Alice found at first was in managing her flamingo". Illustration by John Tenniel, 1865.

The Jabberwock, as illustrated by John Tenniel for Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, including the poem "Jabberwocky".

In the same year, 1856, a new Dean, Henry Liddell, arrived at Christ Church, bringing with him his young family, all of whom would figure largely in Dodgson's life and, over the following years, greatly influence his writing career. Dodgson became close friends with Liddell's wife, Lorina, and their children, particularly the three sisters: Lorina, Edith and Alice Liddell. He was for many years widely assumed to have derived his own "Alice" from Alice Liddell. This was given some apparent substance by the fact the acrostic poem at the end of Through the Looking Glass spells out her name, and that there are many superficial references to her hidden in the text of both books. It has been pointed out that Dodgson himself repeatedly denied in later life that his "little heroine" was based on any real child,^[32][33] and frequently dedicated his works to girls of his acquaintance, adding their names in acrostic poems at the beginning of the text. Gertrude Chataway's name appears in this form at the beginning of The Hunting of the Snark, and no one has ever suggested this means any of the characters in the narrative are based on her.^[33]

Though information is scarce (Dodgson's diaries for the years 1858–1862 are missing), it does seem clear that his friendship with the Liddell family was an important part of his life in the late 1850s, and he grew into the habit of taking the children (first the boy, Harry, and later the three girls) on rowing trips accompanied by an adult friend^[34] to nearby Nuneham Courtenay or Godstow.^[35]

It was on one such expedition, on 4 July 1862, that Dodgson invented the outline of the story that eventually became his first and largest commercial success. Having told the story and been begged by Alice Liddell to write it down, Dodgson eventually (after much delay) presented her with a handwritten, illustrated manuscript entitled Alice's Adventures Under Ground in November 1864.^[35]

Before this, the family of friend and mentor George MacDonald read Dodgson's incomplete manuscript, and the enthusiasm of the MacDonald children encouraged Dodgson to seek publication. In 1863, he had taken the unfinished manuscript to Macmillan the publisher, who liked it immediately. After the possible alternative titles Alice Among the Fairies and Alice's Golden Hour were rejected, the work was finally published as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in 1865 under the Lewis Carroll pen-name, which Dodgson had first used some nine years earlier.^[25] The illustrations this time were by Sir John Tenniel; Dodgson evidently thought that a published book would need the skills of a professional artist.

The overwhelming commercial success of the first Alice book changed Dodgson's life in many ways. The fame of his alter ego "Lewis Carroll" soon spread around the world. He was inundated with fan mail and with sometimes unwanted attention. Indeed, according to one popular story, Queen Victoria herself enjoyed Alice In Wonderland so much that she suggested he dedicate his next book to her, and was accordingly presented with his next work, a scholarly mathematical volume entitled An Elementary Treatise on Determinants.^[36][37] Dodgson himself vehemently denied this story, commenting "...It is utterly false in every particular: nothing even resembling it has occurred";^[37][38] and it is unlikely for other reasons: as T.B. Strong comments in a Times article, "It would have been clean contrary to all his practice to identify [the] author of Alice with the author of his mathematical works".^[39][40] He also began earning quite substantial sums of money but continued with his seemingly disliked post at Christ Church.^[25]

Late in 1871, a sequel – Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There – was published. (The title page of the first edition erroneously gives "1872" as the date of publication.^[41]) Its somewhat darker mood possibly reflects the changes in Dodgson's life. His father had recently died (1868), plunging him into a depression that lasted some years.^[25]

[edit] The Hunting of the Snark

In 1876, Dodgson produced his last great work, The Hunting of the Snark, a fantastical "nonsense" poem, exploring the adventures of a bizarre crew of tradesmen, and one beaver, who set off to find the eponymous creature. The painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti reputedly became convinced the poem was about him.^[25]

Photography[link]

Photo of Alice Liddell taken by Lewis Carroll (1858).

In 1856, Dodgson took up the new art form of photography, first under the influence of his uncle Skeffington Lutwidge, and later his Oxford friend Reginald Southey.^[42] He soon excelled at the art and became a well-known gentleman-photographer, and he seems even to have toyed with the idea of making a living out of it in his very early years.^[25]

A recent study by Roger Taylor and Edward Wakeling^[43] exhaustively lists every surviving print, and Taylor calculates that just over fifty percent of his surviving work depicts young girls, though this may be a highly distorted figure as approximately 60% of his original photographic portfolio is now missing, so any firm conclusions are difficult.^{[citation needed]} Dodgson also made many studies of men, women, male children and landscapes; his subjects also include skeletons, dolls, dogs, statues and paintings, and trees. His pictures of children were taken with a parent in attendance and many of the pictures were taken in the Liddell garden, because natural sunlight was required for good exposures.^[34]

He also found photography to be a useful entrée into higher social circles. During the most productive part of his career, he made portraits of notable sitters such as John Everett Millais, Ellen Terry, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Julia Margaret Cameron, Michael Faraday and Alfred, Lord Tennyson.^[25]

Dodgson abruptly ceased photography in 1880. Over 24 years, he had completely mastered the medium, set up his own studio on the roof of Tom Quad, and created around 3,000 images. Fewer than 1,000 have survived time and deliberate destruction. He reported that he stopped taking photographs because keeping his studio working was difficult (he used the wet collodion process) and commercial photographers (who started using the dry plate process in the 1870s) took pictures more quickly. ^[44]

With the advent of Modernism, tastes changed, and his photography was forgotten from around 1920 until the 1960s.^{[citation needed]}

Inventions[link]

To promote letter writing, Dodgson invented The Wonderland Postage-Stamp Case in 1889. This was a cloth-backed folder with twelve slots, two marked for inserting the then most commonly used penny stamp, and one each for the other current denominations to one shilling. The folder was then put into a slip case decorated with a picture of Alice on the front and the Cheshire Cat on the back. All could be conveniently carried in a pocket or purse. When issued it also included a copy of Carroll's pamphletted lecture, Eight or Nine Wise Words About Letter-Writing.^[45][46]

Reconstructed nyctograph, with scale demonstrated by a 5 euro cent.

Another invention is a writing tablet called the nyctograph for use at night that allowed for note-taking in the dark; thus eliminating the trouble of getting out of bed and striking a light when one wakes with an idea. The device consisted of a gridded card with sixteen squares and system of symbols representing an alphabet of Dodgson's design, using letter shapes similar to the Graffiti writing system on a Palm device.

Among the games he devised outside of logic there are a number of word games, including an early version of what today is known as Scrabble. He also appears to have invented, or at least certainly popularised, the Word Ladder (or "doublet" as it was known at first); a form of brain-teaser that is still popular today: the game of changing one word into another by altering one letter at a time, each successive change always resulting in a genuine word. For instance, CAT is transformed into DOG by the following steps: CAT, COT, DOT, DOG.^[25]

Other items include a rule for finding the day of the week for any date; a means for justifying right margins on a typewriter; a steering device for a velociam (a type of tricycle); new systems of parliamentary representation;^[47] more nearly fair elimination rules for tennis tournaments; a new sort of postal money order; rules for reckoning postage; rules for a win in betting; rules for dividing a number by various divisors; a cardboard scale for the college common room he worked in later in life, which, held next to a glass, ensured the right amount of liqueur for the price paid; a double-sided adhesive strip for things like the fastening of envelopes or mounting things in books; a device for helping a bedridden invalid to read from a book placed sideways; and at least two ciphers for cryptography.^[25]

Mathematical work[link]

Within the academic discipline of mathematics, Dodgson worked primarily in the fields of geometry, matrix algebra, mathematical logic and recreational mathematics, producing nearly a dozen books under his real name. Dodgson also developed new ideas in the study of elections (e.g., Dodgson's method) and committees; some of this work was not published until well after his death. He worked as a mathematics tutor at Oxford, an occupation that gave him some financial security.

Later years[link]

A posthumous portrait of Lewis Carroll by Hubert von Herkomer, based on photographs. This painting now hangs in the Great Hall of Christ Church, Oxford.

Over the remaining twenty years of his life, throughout his growing wealth and fame, his existence remained little changed. He continued to teach at Christ Church until 1881, and remained in residence there until his death. His last novel, the two-volume Sylvie and Bruno, was published in 1889 and 1893 respectively. It achieved nowhere near the success of the Alice books. Its intricacy was apparently not appreciated by contemporary readers. The reviews and its sales, only 13,000 copies, were disappointing.^[48][49]

The only occasion on which (as far as is known) he travelled abroad was a trip to Russia in 1867 as an ecclesiastical together with the Reverend Henry Liddon. He recounts the travel in his "Russian Journal", which was first commercially published in 1935.^[50] On his way to Russia and back Lewis Carroll also saw different cities in Belgium, Germany, the partitioned Poland, and France.

He died on 14 January 1898 at his sisters' home, "The Chestnuts" in Guildford, of pneumonia following influenza. He was two weeks away from turning 66 years old. He is buried in Guildford at the Mount Cemetery.^[25]

Controversies and mysteries[link]

"Carroll Myth"[link]

Since 1999 a group of scholars, notably Karoline Leach, Hugues Lebailly and Sherry L. Ackerman, John Tufail, Douglas Nickel and others, argue that what Leach terms the "Carroll Myth" has wildly distorted biographical perception of his life and his work. Leach's book, In the Shadow of the Dreamchild, raised a considerable amount of controversy. In brief the claim is that:

• In general terms Dodgson's life has been simplified and 'infantilised' by a combination of inaccurate biography and the longstanding unavailability of key evidence, which allowed legends to proliferate unchecked.
• By the time the evidence did become available the 'mythic' image of the man had become so embedded in scholastic and popular thinking it remained unquestioned, despite the fact the evidence failed to support it.
• If the evidence is examined dispassionately it shows many of the most famous legends about the man (e.g. his 'paedophilia', and his exclusive adoration of small girls) are untrue, or at least grossly simplified.^[51]

In more detail, Lebailly has endeavoured to set Dodgson's child-photography within the "Victorian Child Cult", which perceived child-nudity as essentially an expression of innocence. Lebailly claims that studies of child nudes were mainstream and fashionable in Dodgson's time and that most photographers, including Oscar Gustave Rejlander and Julia Margaret Cameron, made them as a matter of course. Lebailly continues that child nudes even appeared on Victorian Christmas cards, implying a very different social and aesthetic assessment of such material. Lebailly concludes that it has been an error of Dodgson's biographers to view his child-photography with 20th or 21st century eyes, and to have presented it as some form of personal idiosyncrasy, when it was in fact a response to a prevalent aesthetic and philosophical movement of the time.

Leach's reappraisal of Dodgson focused in particular on his controversial sexuality. She argues that the allegations of paedophilia rose initially from a misunderstanding of Victorian morals, as well as the mistaken idea, fostered by Dodgson's various biographers, that he had no interest in adult women. She termed the traditional image of Dodgson "the Carroll Myth".^[52] She drew attention to the large amounts of evidence in his diaries and letters that he was also keenly interested in adult women, married and single, and enjoyed several scandalous (by the social standards of his time) relationships with them. She also pointed to the fact that many of those he described as "child-friends" were girls in their late teens and even twenties.^[53] She argues that suggestions of paedophilia evolved only many years after his death, when his well-meaning family had suppressed all evidence of his relationships with women in an effort to preserve his reputation, thus giving a false impression of a man interested only in little girls. Similarly, Leach traces the claim that many of Carroll's female friendships ended when the girls reached the age of 14 to a 1932 biography by Langford Reed.^[54]

The concept of the Carroll Myth has produced polarised reactions from Carroll scholars. In 2004 Contrariwise, the Association for new Lewis Carroll studies.^[55] was established, and those such as Carolyn Sigler and Cristopher Hollingsworth have joined the ranks of those calling for a major reassessment. But the concept of the Myth has been opposed by some leading Carroll scholars, in particular Morton N. Cohen and Martin Gardner (their comments, and those of more positive reviewers, can be found on Karoline Leach's own page). Biographer Jenny Woolf, while agreeing that Carroll's image has been comprehensively misrepresented in the past, believes that this can be attributed partly to Carroll's own behaviour and in particular his tendency to self-caricature in later life.^[56]

Ordination[link]

Dodgson had been groomed for the ordained ministry in the Anglican Church from a very early age and was expected, as a condition of his residency at Christ Church, to take holy orders within four years of obtaining his master's degree. He delayed the process for some time but eventually took deacon's orders on 22 December 1861. But when the time came a year later to progress to priestly orders, Dodgson appealed to the dean for permission not to proceed. This was against college rules and initially Dean Liddell told him he would have to consult the college ruling body, which would almost undoubtedly have resulted in his being expelled. For unknown reasons, Dean Liddell changed his mind overnight and permitted Dodgson to remain at the college in defiance of the rules.^[57] Uniquely amongst senior students of his time Dodgson never became a priest.

There is currently no conclusive evidence about why Dodgson rejected the priesthood. Some have suggested his stammer made him reluctant to take the step, because he was afraid of having to preach.^[58] Wilson^[59] quotes letters by Dodgson describing difficulty in reading lessons and prayers rather than preaching in his own words. But Dodgson did indeed preach in later life, even though not in priest's orders, so it seems unlikely his impediment was a major factor affecting his choice.^{[citation needed]} Wilson also points out that the then Bishop of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce, who ordained Dodgson, had strong views against clergy going to the theatre, one of Dodgson's great interests. Others have suggested that he was having serious doubts about Anglicanism.^{[citation needed]} He was interested in minority forms of Christianity (he was an admirer of F.D. Maurice) and "alternative" religions (theosophy).^[60] Dodgson became deeply troubled by an unexplained sense of sin and guilt at this time (the early 1860s) and frequently expressed the view in his diaries that he was a "vile and worthless" sinner, unworthy of the priesthood,^[61] and this sense of sin and unworthiness may well have affected his decision to abandon being ordained to the priesthood.